---
title: "Visual Routines and Visual Search: A Real-Time Implementation and an Automata-Theoretic Analysis"
authors:
  - "Ian Horswill"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1995/8"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1995/0008.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1995
pages: "56-62"
track: "Action and Perception"
keywords:
---

# Visual Routines and Visual Search: A Real-Time Implementation and an Automata-Theoretic Analysis

Ian Horswill

*Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 56-62.

## Abstract

I describe a real- time implementation of Ullman's visual routine processor (VRP) theory of intermediate vision for visual search. The system performs serial self- terminating visual search and computes 2D spatial relations of objects from live color video using low cost hardware. I present a formal model of a VRP with unbounded resources and quantify the amount of external control structure required to solve Horn clauses using the VRP. In discussing the effect of resource limitations I show that contemporary models of biological visual attention are unable to solve surprisingly simple queries. I also describe a novel logic programming system that finds satisfying variable assignments for Horn clause queries using the VRP. The system contains no internal database: all logic variables are directly grounded in the world using VRP queries. Finally, I briefly discuss experiments with natural language interpretation and motor control using the VRP. Experiments on real data are given.