Bottom-up and top-down object matching using asynchronous agents and a contrario principles

We experiment a vision architecture for object matching based on a hierarchy of independent agents running asynchronously in parallel. Agents communicate through bidirectional signals, enabling the mix of top-down and bottom-up influences. Following the so-called a contrario principle, each signal is given a strength according to the statistical relevance of its associated visual data. By handling most important signals first, the system focuses on most promising hypotheses and provides relevant results as soon as possible. Compared to an equivalent feed-forward and sequential algorithm, our architecture is shown capable of handling more visual data and thus reach higher detection rates in less time.