Computer vision

“Intelligent” computers require knowledge of their environment, and the most effective means of acquiring such knowledge is by seeing. Vision opens a new realm of computer applications. Weather analysis from cloud maps and medical diagnosis from x-rays and blood cell counts are two of many high volume data processing tasks that require pictorial input. Man-machine communication will be facilitated if a person can directly show the computer a real object, rather than describe it symbolically. Designers, for example, could then easily obtain a computerized structural analysis of scale models.