computer vision

Imagine a smart Roomba that only cleans the carpet when little Sam spills cornflakes onto it, or a kitchen robot that cooks a steak perfectly to your liking, or an autonomous car that can adapt to different road conditions. Each of these robots will need to have a vision system that can identify surface textures and colors. Well such a vision system is a step closer to reality thanks to researchers at the NTT Communication Science Labs and MIT's Brain and Cognitive Sciences Labs. The researchers found that there is a correlation between human perception of glossiness and statistical properties of the image that can be easily computed. Well, if you are now officially lost, don't worry: I have two entertaining links here and here of some entertaining illusions created by one of the researchers, Professor Adelson. For the rest of you, you can read more on the work published in the prestigious Nature here.