Collaborative Research: Visual Cortex on Silicon

人类视觉系统实时理解和解释各种视觉任务的复杂场景，同时消耗不到20瓦的电力。这个计算机远征项目探索了机器视觉系统的整体设计，这种设计有可能接近并最终超过人类视觉系统的能力。这将使下一代机器视觉系统不仅可以记录图像，还可以理解视觉内容。这种智能机器视觉系统将对社会产生多方面的影响，包括为视障人士提供视觉辅助，为减少汽车事故提供驾驶员辅助，以及增强购物、旅行和安全的增强现实。这项研究的变革性将激励和培训新一代学生从事跨越神经科学、计算和工程学科的跨学科工作。而今天的几个机器视觉系统都可以成功地完成一项或几项人类任务？比如在点拍相机中检测人脸？他们在执行广泛的视觉任务、在复杂、杂乱的环境中操作以及为他们的决策提供推理方面的能力仍然有限。相比之下，哺乳动物的视觉皮质在各种面向目标的认知任务中表现出色，比定制的最先进的机器视觉系统至少能效高三个数量级。这项拟议的研究设想了一个整体设计的机器视觉系统，通过开发一个由视觉算法、硬件设计、人机界面和信息存储组成的综合解决方案，接近人类大脑皮层的认知能力。该项目旨在了解视觉皮质中使用的基本机制，以实现新的视觉算法和硬件结构的设计，这些算法和硬件结构可以提高相对于现有机器视觉系统的功率、速度、灵活性和识别精度。为实现这一目标，该项目提出了一个雄心勃勃的跨学科研究议程，该议程将：(I)了解大脑中以目标为导向的视觉注意机制，以设计任务驱动的视觉算法；(Ii)开发视觉理论和算法，随着场景的日益复杂而提高性能；(Iii)整合生物和机器视觉技术的互补方法；(Iv)在对视觉皮质的理解的进步和电子设备的出现的启发下，开发一种新型的计算架构；以及(V)设计将有效地帮助最终用户的人机界面，同时保护隐私和最大限度地发挥效用。这些进步将使我们能够用认知视觉系统取代当今的摄像头，认知视觉系统可以更智能地分析和理解复杂场景，并与用户动态交互。以类似于人类的方式理解环境并与其交互的机器视觉系统将实现新的变革性应用。该项目将开发实验平台，以：(1)帮助视障人士；(2)提高司机的注意力；(3)增强现实，为零售购物或度假旅游提供更好的体验，并加强关键公共基础设施的安全。该项目将产生教育和研究成果，将通过门户网站和在线讲座广泛传播。由此产生的文物和原型将加强正在进行的针对代表性不足的少数民族和普通公众的成功推广计划，如博物馆展品、科学博览会和针对K-12学生的夏令营。它还将在其他伙伴地点推动类似的新的外联努力。该项目将帮助确定和开发课程材料和项目，旨在向四年制大学的学生灌输对计算机领域的兴趣。还计划与两个为拉美裔服务的机构、行业、国家实验室和国际项目建立伙伴关系。

The human vision system understands and interprets complex scenes for a wide range of visual tasks in real-time while consuming less than 20 Watts of power. This Expeditions-in-Computing project explores holistic design of machine vision systems that have the potential to approach and eventually exceed the capabilities of human vision systems. This will enable the next generation of machine vision systems to not only record images but also understand visual content. Such smart machine vision systems will have a multi-faceted impact on society, including visual aids for visually impaired persons, driver assistance for reducing automotive accidents, and augmented reality for enhanced shopping, travel, and safety. The transformative nature of the research will inspire and train a new generation of students in inter-disciplinary work that spans neuroscience, computing and engineering discipline.While several machine vision systems today can each successfully perform one or a few human tasks ? such as detecting human faces in point-and-shoot cameras ? they are still limited in their ability to perform a wide range of visual tasks, to operate in complex, cluttered environments, and to provide reasoning for their decisions. In contrast, the mammalian visual cortex excels in a broad variety of goal-oriented cognitive tasks, and is at least three orders of magnitude more energy efficient than customized state-of-the-art machine vision systems. The proposed research envisions a holistic design of a machine vision system that will approach the cognitive abilities of the human cortex, by developing a comprehensive solution consisting of vision algorithms, hardware design, human-machine interfaces, and information storage. The project aims to understand the fundamental mechanisms used in the visual cortex to enable the design of new vision algorithms and hardware fabrics that can improve power, speed, flexibility, and recognition accuracies relative to existing machine vision systems. Towards this goal, the project proposes an ambitious inter-disciplinary research agenda that will (i) understand goal-directed visual attention mechanisms in the brain to design task-driven vision algorithms; (ii) develop vision theory and algorithms that scale in performance with increasing complexity of a scene; (iii) integrate complementary approaches in biological and machine vision techniques; (iv) develop a new-genre of computing architectures inspired by advances in both the understanding of the visual cortex and the emergence of electronic devices; and (v) design human-computer interfaces that will effectively assist end-users while preserving privacy and maximizing utility. These advances will allow us to replace current-day cameras with cognitive visual systems that more intelligently analyze and understand complex scenes, and dynamically interact with users.Machine vision systems that understand and interact with their environment in ways similar to humans will enable new transformative applications. The project will develop experimental platforms to: (1) assist visually impaired people; (2) enhance driver attention; and (3) augment reality to provide enhanced experience for retail shopping or a vacation visit, and enhanced safety for critical public infrastructure. This project will result in education and research artifacts that will be disseminated widely through a web portal and via online lecture delivery. The resulting artifacts and prototypes will enhance successful ongoing outreach programs to under-represented minorities and the general public, such as museum exhibits, science fairs, and a summer camp aimed at K-12 students. It will also spur similar new outreach efforts at other partner locations. The project will help identify and develop course material and projects directed at instilling interest in computing fields for students in four-year colleges. Partnerships with two Hispanic serving institutes, industry, national labs and international projects are also planned.