Advances in sensing, signal processing, and computer technology during the past half century have stimulated numerous attempts to design general-purpose ma chines that see. These attempts have met with at best modest success and more typically outright failure. The difficulties encountered in building working com puter vision systems based on state-of-the-art techniques came as a surprise. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the problem is that machine vision sys tems cannot deal with numerous visual tasks that humans perform rapidly and effortlessly. In reaction to this perceived discrepancy in performance, various researchers (notably Marr, 1982) suggested that the design of machine-vision systems should be based on principles drawn from the study of biological systems. This "neuro morphic" or "anthropomorphic" approach has proven fruitful: the use of pyramid (multiresolution) image representation methods in image compression is one ex ample of a successful application based on principles primarily derived from the study of biological vision systems. It is still the case, however, that the perfor of computer vision systems falls far short of that of the natural systems mance they are intended to mimic, suggesting that it is time to look even more closely at the remaining differences between artificial and biological vision systems.

The exponential explosion of images and videos concerns everybody's common life, since this media is now present everywhere and in all human activities. Scientists, artists and engineers, in any field, need to be aware of the basic mechanisms that allow them to understand how images are essentially information carriers. Images bear a strong evocative power because their perception quickly brings into mind a number of related pictorial contents of past experiences and even of abstract concepts like pleasure, attraction or aversion.This book analyzes the visual hints, thanks to which images are generally interpreted, processed and exploited both by humans and computer programs. - Comprehensive introductory text - Introduces the reader to the large world of imagery on which many human activities are based, from politics to entertainment, from technical reports to artistic creations - Provides a unified framework where both biological and artificial vision are discussed through visual cues, through the role of contexts and the available multi-channels to deliver information

This volume contains chapters derived from papers presented at the 3rd Global Conference on Visual Literacies: Exploring Critical Issues held in Oxford, UK, July 14th through the 16th, 2009. The conference brought together a broad range of cultural, artistic and academic participants.

ICPA provides a forum for researchers and academics who share a common interest in ecological psychology to come together, present new research, and foster ideas towards the advancement of the field. This volume is the fourteenth in the Studies in Perception and Action book series, and highlights research presented at the 19th International Conference of Perception and Action (ICPA) in the summer of 2017. Since 1991, this edited book series has appeared in conjunction with the biennial ICPA meeting. The short papers and empirical articles presented in this book represent the contributions of researchers and laboratories from across the globe. The reader will find new, cutting-edge research on a wide variety of topics in perception and action. This volume will especially appeal to those that are interested in James J. Gibson's ecological approach to psychology, as well as, more broadly, students and researchers of visual and haptic perception, perceptual development, human movement dynamics, human factors, and social processes.

‘How do children see the world?’ is a question of immense importance which fascinates not only psychologists but also parents and all those concerned with education. In this English translation, first published in 1976, the author, who was Professor of Psychology at the René Descartes University in Paris, provided the most comprehensive review at the time of the development of visual perception in children, a field to which she herself had made a substantial contribution. Her book, which gave the first comprehensive study of the relationship between cognitive development and perceptual activities in small children, explores how they interpret visual information and gradually build up a picture of the world. The author had devoted fifteen years to research on the visual world of the child and possessed an exhaustive knowledge of the experimental literature on the subject in English, French, Russian and other languages. She saw perception as a form of knowledge which the child exploits and adapts in a variety of ways at different stages of development. This is brilliantly demonstrated in her own research on the strategies children use in judging things as ‘different’ or ‘the same’ and the way these relate to the structure of their perceptual organisation. This book is essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in developmental and cognitive psychology; it also provides an object lesson in the application of experimental methods. In addition the organisation of the material made it a valuable textbook for advanced undergraduate and post-graduate teaching and will still be of interest in its historical context today.

There was military project management. There was construction project management. Then there was business project management, a tool described as 'the wave of the future'. Where are architects in all this, professionals whose work has always been project-driven? There is design management in engineering, product design, graphics, packaging, management theory and even in politics. Construction consultants talk about managing design. When are architects going to become committed to managing design? Getting There by Design adopts an architect's view to design and project management. It sets out the fundamental principles and shows how they are applied, dealing with these two topics as one indivisible subject. 'Getting There by Design' demonstrates how to: - make project efforts goal-oriented - set up a planning and monitoring basis to architectural projects - put the architect's fee calculus on a rationale basis - diagnose your firm's practice culture - develop successful teams Put your practice onto a more effective basis. Ken Allinson is an architect in private practice and principal of 'Architectural Dialogue'. He also teaches design studio and lectures on design and project management. He was formerly an associate at DEGW London and the Terry Farrell Partnership. He has practice experience in Europe, the USA and Japan and is the author of 'The Wild Card of Design' (1993).

The dominance of vision is so strong in sighted people that touch is sometimes considered as a minor perceptual modality. However, touch is a powerful tool which contributes significantly to our knowledge of space and objects. Its intensive use by blind persons allows them to reach the same levels of knowledge and cognition as their sighted peers.In this book, specialized researchers present the recent state of knowledge about the cognitive functioning of touch. After an analysis of the neurophysiology and neuropsychology of touch, exploratory manual behaviors, intramodal haptic (tactual-kinesthetic) abilities and cross-modal visual-tactual coordination are examined in infants, children and adults, and in non-human primates. These studies concern both sighted and blind persons in order to know whether early visual deprivation modifies the modes of processing space and objects. The last section is devoted to the technical devices favoring the school and social integration of the young blind: Braille reading, use of raised maps and drawings, “sensory substitution” displays, and new technologies of communication adapted for the blind. (Series B)