Researchers help robots see better

摘要

A new algorithm by which robots can recognize a randomly oriented object has been developed by Jared Glover, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Sanja Popovic, an MIT grad who is now at Google. Based on Bingham distribution, a statistical technique often used in analysis of data about historical changes in Earth's magnetic field, the algorithm is 15% better than its best competitor at identifying familiar objects in cluttered scenes. What's more, in cases where visual information is particularly poor, the algorithm offers an improvement of more than 50% over the best alternatives, achieving significantly more reliable object detections.