Σynergos—Synergetic Vision Research

This paper reports the development of a powerful andversatile laboratory for vision research, namely Σynergos,which has been developed and implemented under Delphi/Windowsin a distributed systems of microcomputers. The main paradigmunderlying the whole approach consists in integrating severalconcepts and techniques into a single computing environment,i.e. Σynergos, in such a way that the requisitesand possibilities of each of the constituent components complementone another and the thus obtained result becomes greater thanthe sum of its parts. The components of Σynergosinclude distributed system capabilities and a number of librariescontaining algorithms for: computer vision, modeling and simulationof biological visual systems, data and classification analysis,software validation and comparative evaluation, Internet, off-the-shelfapplication, image databases, artificial intelligence, data mining,and visualization resources. In this paper special emphasis isplaced upon the Internet, distributed implementation and biologicalvision. After outlining the principal requisites and potentialsunderlying each of such components, some specific situationsof interest arising from the integration of two or more of suchelements are described and discussed. Details concerning theintegration with Internet and the implementation of the laboratoryas a distributed system are provided, and a complete case-exampleis presented. This applications regards the implementation ofa psychophysical experiment aimed at investigating human perceptionof pictorial complexity, including the derivation of a mathematic-computationalframework modeling such a perception as well as the use of theInternet as a source of stimuli and for reporting the obtainedresults. In addition, the mathematic-computational model is derivedby using a parallel version of the genetic algorithm runningon the distributed system of PCs. The obtained encouraging resultssubstantiate the potential of this vision laboratory for multidisciplinaryvision research.

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