Computer vision: What is the object? (abstract)

Stone, J V (1993)

Vision consists of a multiplicity of tasks, of which object identification is only one. We in the computer vision community have concentrated our efforts on object identification, and have thereby ensured that the formulation of the problem of vision provides methods which are not of general utility for vision.

Ironically one consequence of this is that computer vision may not even be of use for object identification. An analysis of why computer vision has become synonymous with object identification is presented. The implications of this analysis for object identification and for interpreting neurophysiological evidence in terms of 'feature detectors' are presented. A formulation of the problem of vision in terms of spatio-temporal characteristics is proposed.