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C00002 00002		It  is convenient  to  divide work  in  computer vision  into
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	It  is convenient  to  divide work  in  computer vision  into
scientific  work and work  in basic  technology.  Scientific  work is
aimed at getting  certain knowledge, and  basic technological work  is
aimed at  getting certain  kinds of  capability independently  of how
this capability  may be applied.  In the field of computer vision, as
in artificial intelligence generally, these efforts  are intertwined,
and researchers  are often  not clear as  to which goal  dominates in
their work.


KNOWLEDGE

	In computer  vision, the  main scientific  questions are  the
following:

	1. What  kinds of information  about the world  are available
through vision?   Clearly only partial information  about a person is
available from vision when  you see him seated  behind a desk.   When
you see a machine at a distance even less information is available.

	2.  What  information about  the  world  can be  assumed  and
combined  with  direct vision  information  to get  information about
three dimensional objects?  What are the logical  laws that determine
what can be legitimately inferred or conjectured?

	3. What is  it reasonable to try to know  about an object and
how can this information be represented in the memory of a  computer?
Clearly this is different for a machine  part whose complete shape is
often  determinable and  necessary and  a  tree or  hair where  it is
impossible  and  unnecessary  to  determine  the  location   of  each
individual hair  or leaf.   But  note that a  barber or  tree surgeon
while not  keeping in mind the location of all hairs or branches, has
requires temporary information about particular hairs  or branches in
order to do the next step of his work.

	4. What  information about a  scene comes from  the different
visual characteristics?   What redundancy  is there?   By what  rules
can the different  cues be combined legitimately to  give information
about  a scene?  The  kinds of information that  have been considered
include brightness  and  brightness  edges, color  and  color  edges,
texture and regions  grown by combining small  regions of homogeneous
texture,  the  distance  as  measured  by  range  finders  or by  the
parallax of two views  together with parallax edges.   Recently there
as been  a lot of work  on so-called top-down approaches  where a lot
of information about what  objects may be presumed  to be is used  to
interpret lower level  information.  Thus  if an object  was presumed
to be a human, two and not more arms must be accounted for.


CAPABILITY

	The  main capabilities  computer  vision research  is working
towards are the following:

	1. The ability to find objects such as persons,  vehicles, or
machine  parts  in  a  complex   environment  and  to  determine  the
attitudes  of the objects found.   Thus we not only  need to find the
vehicles in  a scene  but we  also need to  know which  way they  are
going.   Machine parts must be located  oriented so that manipulators
can pick them up.

	2. The  ability to  give a  description of  a scene  that  is
complete with regard to those aspects relevant to a certain task.


APPLICATIONS

	Computer  vision has  many  potential applications  including
some of special interest to the Department of Defense.
Here are some of them:

1. Remote control.  Before going into detail, it is necessary to mention
one major embarassment for the computer vision enthusiast.  Namely, the
situation is somewhat analogous to early discussions of the employment
of computers for business and inventory purposes.  Much more elementary
things than the employment of computers remained to be done.

	At an early conference on possible applications of computers in
libraries, it was pointed out that a very large improvement could be made
without computers by adopting a proposal made by Joseph Henry in 1859 for
a uniform national cataloging system.

	An analogous role with regard to computer vision is played by
remote operation using television.  There are still very large payoffs
for ordinary remote operation not involving computers.  However, just
as with business and with libraries, there is also a great potential
payoff arising from the use of computers, and it is not necessary to
wait for all potential remote control payoffs to be realized before
beginning the study and even the application of computer vision.

	a. Remotely piloted aircraft.