Artificial Vision Image Description, Recognition and Communication Signal Processing and its Applications SERIES EDITORS Dr Richard Green The Engineering Practice Farnborough, UK Professor Doug Gray CRC for Sensor Signal and Information Process&g, Signal Processing Research Institute, Technology Park, Adelaide, South Australia Professor Edward J. Powers Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, USA EDITORIAL BOARD Professor Maurice G. Bellanger CNAM, Paris, France Professor Gerry D. Cain School of Electronic and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, University of Westminster, London, UK Dr Mark Sandier Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, King's College London, University of London, UK Professor Colin Cowan Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, Loughborough University of Technology, Loughborough, UK Dr David Bull Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Bristol, UK Professor D.J. Creasey (deceased) School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Birmingham, UK Dr Henry Stark Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA Artificial Vision Image Description, Recognition and Communication edited by VIRGINIO CANTONI Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica Universith di Pavia Via Ferrata 1 27100 Pavia, Italy STEFANO LEVIALDI Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Informazione Universith di Roma "La Sapienza" Via Salaria 113 00198 Roma, Italy VITO ROBERTO Dipartimento di Informatica Universith di Udine Via delle Scienze 206 33100 Udine, Italy ACADEMIC PRESS San Diego London Boston New York Sydney Tokyo Toronto This book is printed on acid-free paper. Copyright (cid:14)9 1997 by ACADEMIC PRESS All Rights Reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Academic Press, Inc. 525 B Street, Suite 1900, San Diego, California 92101-4495, USA Academic Press Limited 24-28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DX, UK ISBN 0-12-444816-X A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by Mackreth Media Services, Herts, UK Printed in Great Britain at the University Printing House, Cambridge 96 97 98 99 00 01 EB 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Series Preface Signal processing applications are now widespread. Relatively cheap consumer products through to the more expensive military and industrial systems extensively exploit this technology. This spread was initiated in the 1960s by introduction of cheap digital technology to implement signal processing algorithms in real-time for some applications. Since that time semiconductor technology has developed rapidly to support the spread. In parallel, an ever increasing body of mathematical theory is being used to develop signal processing algorithms. The basic mathematical foundations, however, have been known and well understood for some time. Signal Processing and its Applications addresses the entire breadth and depth of the subject with texts that cover the theory, technology and applications of signal processing in its widest sense. This is reflected in the composition of the Editorial Board, who have interests in: (i) Theory - The physics of the application and the mathematics to model the system; (ii) Implementation - VLSI/ASIC design, computer architecture, numerical methods, systems design methodology, and CAE; (iii) Applications - Speech, sonar, radar, seismic, medical, communications (both audio and video), guidance, navigation, remote sensing, imaging, survey, archiving, non-destructive and non-intrusive testing, and personal entertainment. Signal Processing and its Applications will typically be of most interest to postgraduate students, academics, and practising engineers who work in the field and develop signal processing applications. Some texts may also be of interest to final year undergraduates. Richard C. Green The Engineering Practice, Farnborough, UK About the Editors Virginio Cantonio is presently Full Professor of Computer Programming at Pavia University. His most recent work is concerned with object recognition and parallel architectures for image processing and computer vision. He has been the coordinator of an Italian National Project involving a consortium of seven universities for the design and construction of a pyramidal system for image analysis. He is author or co-author of more than 120 journal or conference papers and book chapters and has edited or co-edited 12 books while being co-author of Pyramidal Architectures for Computer Fision. Stefano Levialdi, Full Professor of Computer Science at Rome University, is the Director of the Pictorial Computing Laboratory. He has published over 180 scientific papers and edited over 20 books on image processing. He is founder and co-editor of the Journal of Visual Languages and Computing and Associate Editor of Pattern Recognition, Computer Vision and Image Understanding, Pattern Recognition Letters, Machine Vision and Applications and Signal Processing. Vito Roberto is Associate Professor at the Computer Science Faculty, Uni- versity of Udine, Italy. His research interests concern the design of intelligent systems for image interpretation and communication, in several application domains. He is responsible for the Machine Vision Laboratory at the same University. Professor Roberto is author of several articles and editor of many volumes in the field of pattern recognition and artificial intelligence. Contents Series Preface ............................................ v Contributors ............................................. ix Preface ................................................. xiii Part I Active Vision ...................................... 1 1 Attentional Engagement in Vision Systems ................... 3 V. Cantoni, G. Caputo and L. Lombardi 2 Attentional Mechanisms in Computer Vision .................. 43 Y. Yeshurun 3 The Active Vision Idea .................................. 53 M. Savini 4 Active Model Acquisition and Sensor Planning ................ 65 E. Trucco 5 The Regularization of Early Vision ......................... 87 A. Verri Part II Integrating Visual Modules ........................... 105 6 Geometric Modelling and Spatial Reasoning .................. 107 M. Bertolotto, E. Bruzzone and L. De Floriani 7 Vision as Uncertain Knowledge ............................ 135 V. Roberto 8 Distributed Systems for Fusion of Visual Information ........... 161 V. Di Gesit and D. Tegolo 9 Hybrid Computation and Reasoning for Artificial Vision ......... 193 E. Ardizzone, A. Chella and S. Gaglio Part IIl Visual Communication .............................. 225 10 Illusion and Difference .................................. 227 A.M. Iacono 11 Computing with/on Images ............................... 239 S. Levialdi, P. Mussio, N. Bianchi and P. Bottoni 12 Visual Databases ....................................... 267 A. Del Bimbo 13 Visual Languages for Tele-action Objects ..................... 281 S.K. Chang List of Contributors Ardizzone, E. Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica Universit& di Palermo Via delle Scienze 90128 Palermo, Italy Bertolotto, M. Dipartimento di Informatica e Scienze dell'Informazione Universifft di Genova Viale Benedetto XV, 3 16132 Genova, Italy Bianchi, N. Dipartimento di Fisica Universifft di Milano Via Viotti 5 20133 Milano, Italy Bottoni, P. Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Informazione Universitfi di Roma 'La Sapienza' Via Salaria, 113 00198 Roma, Italy Bruzzone, E. Dipartimento di Informatica e Scienze dell'Informazione Universit~ di Genova Viale Benedetto XV, 3 16132 Genova, Italy Cantoni, V. Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica Universit~ di Pavia Via Ferrata 1 27100 Pavia, Italy