Please note that this meeting is on a Thursday, not our
usual second Tuesday of the month.


            IEEE Robotics and Automation Society
                Central New England Chapter

                Thursday, February 17, 2005
                Informal Discussion: 6:00 PM
                      Program: 6:30 PM


         AUTONOMOUS VISION SYSTEMS AND HUMAN VISION

                       John Merchant
                       RPU Technology
                        781 444-9426
               email: merchant.j@comcast.net


                          ABSTRACT

High performance video and IR cameras, optically far
superior to the human eye, are now commonplace. However,
physical vision systems to enable autonomous vehicles to
operate and move within their environment, or to
automatically recognize objects, have much less capability
than the human visual system. The vastly superior capability
of human vision, in spite of the primitive optics of the
eye, is generally assumed to be due to the cognitive power
of the brain.

While that is certainly an important factor, a more
fundamental reason is that the eye derives an entirely
different type and quantity of visual information. Physical
image sensors derive visual information by high-pixel-density
Nyquist sampling, which is appropriate when the function of
the vision system is simply to display an image, as in
television. However over 99.99% of the retina the eye
performs low-pixel-density variance sampling. Variance
information can easily be derived from the output of any
standard camera and used in physical vision systems, as it
is in human vision, to more effectively and more efficiently
perform tasks such as automatic recognition.


                     SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

John Merchant has a B.Sc. in General Science from the
University of London and in Mathematics from the University
of Wales, Cardiff. He was with Honeywell Infrared and
Imaging Systems, Lexington, MA, for over 30 years, receiving
their Engineer of the Year award in 1990. He formed RPU
Technology in 1996 with a Phase I SBIR from BMDO for a new
(Spatial Modulation) IR staring sensor, and subsequently
collaborated with Aerodyne Research Inc. Billerica, MA, in a
Phase II development of a prototype. He is now working on
two Phase I SBIRs recently awarded to RPU Technology to
apply variance sampling for autonomous vision and ATR.


                    MEETING INFORMATION

The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society will meet on
Thursday, February 17th, 2005, at Wellesley High School at
6:00 PM for informal discussions and for the formal
presentation between 6:30 and 7:30 PM. The group will have a
no-host dinner afterwards at Bertucci's, where more
conversations can take place with the guest speaker. The
meetings are open to the general public, and all are welcome
at the dinner afterwards.

For more information, contact Rich Maynard at
chair@robotics-boston.org.


                         DIRECTIONS

From Route 128, take either Route 9 or Route 16 west. From
the junction of Routes 9 and 16, follow Route 16 (Washington
Street) west past the Wellesley Hills commuter rail station
(within walking distance of the school), then turn left onto
Rice Street. Wellesley High School is on the left. Parking
is available in a lot just beyond the school.

For a web map showing the location of Wellesley High School,
go to the Yahoo map site at http://maps.yahoo.com/ and enter
the following information in the indicated locations:

	Address:		50 Rice St
	City, State or ZIP:	Wellesley, MA

The star marker is misplaced slightly to the south. Imagine
it about 1 cm toward the top of the map at Rice St.

The GPS coordinates for Rice St in front of the entrance to
the high school building are approximately as follows:

	N 42 18.137'	W 71 16.811'

The GPS coordinates for the parking lot in front of the
entrance to Bertucci's are approximately as follows:

	N 42 18.492'	W 71 16.691'

For more information about our Section and Chapter, visit
our web site at our registered domain URL

	http://www.robotics-boston.org/