The Interpretation of Visual Motion

Abstract

This book uses the methodology of artificial intelligence to investigate the phenomena of visual motion perception: how the visual system constructs descriptions of the environment in terms of objects, their three-dimensional shape, and their motion through space, on the basis of the changing image that reaches the eye. The author has analyzed the computations performed in the course of visual motion analysis. Workable schemes able to perform certain tasks performed by the visual system have been constructed and used as vehicles for investigating the problems faced by the visual system and its methods for solving them. Two major problems are treated: first, the correspondence problem, which concerns the identification of image elements that represent the same object at different times, thereby maintaining the perceptual identity of the object in motion or in change. The second problem is the three-dimensional interpretation of the changing image once a correspondence has been established.The author's computational approach to visual theory makes the work unique, and it should be of interest to psychologists working in visual perception and readers interested in cognitive studies in general, as well as computer scientists interested in machine vision, theoretical neurophysiologists, and philosophers of science.