On Seeing Things, Again

Abstract

Computational vision has developed as a distinct scientific field in the last decade with a shared paradigm, a research strategy and a collection of results within a common theory. That development has focussed on an analysis of the visual task itself; the task requires the unpacking of a collection of confounding processes. Explicit intermediate representations of the confounded domains must be constructed, with certain characteristics. Constraint-based representations and processes provide a common methodology at all levels of the visual system. Adequacy criteria may be applied to the various representations of visual knowledge, both implicit and explicit, that have been proposed. Finally, nine broad areas of research progress are summarized. The agenda for the next decade must include understanding meta-knowledge computation such as the representation and use of the hierarchies of default assumptions that our microtheorierequire.