Object recognition system

MIT researchers claim to have developed a computer that can recognise objects using a newly developed algorithmic technique.

Their object recognition system could allow computers in the future to automatically search through hours of video footage for a particular two-minute scene.

The researchers also envision smart-phone applications where a tourist walking down a street in a strange city could take a photo of an unmarked monument and immediately find out what it was.

It could also improve internet searches of images. For example, if a search engine was told to look for ‘Shakespeare’ it would pull up pictures of Shakespeare and not pictures of Gwyneth Paltrow in the movie Shakespeare in Love.

Typically, object recognition algorithms need to be trained using digital images of objects that have been outlined and labelled. By looking at a million pictures of cars labelled ‘car’, an algorithm can learn to recognise features shared by images of cars.

The problem is that for every new class of objects (trees, buildings, telephone poles) the algorithm has to be trained all over again.