Pattern Recognition and understanding for Visual Information Media

模式识别与理解（Pattern recognition and understanding， PRU）是实现智能视觉信息媒介的一项基础技术，它可以根据个体的需要对现实世界中的视觉信息进行选择、汇总和扩充。该项目的目的是将为制造自动化机器取代人类而发展起来的PRU技术改造为多媒体领域的关键技术，使信息媒体能够支持人类的活动，增强人类的能力。这两种情况的关键区别在于，人在多媒体系统中消耗PRU的输出，而机器在替代人类的自动化系统中消耗它。作为该项目的共同研究对象，我们重点研究了信息媒体PRU中具有代表性和基础性的三个问题。L)处理人类行动和行为的机制。2)处理人类模糊需求的机制。3)处理简单建模不适用的现实世界的机制。通过充分利用以下三个假设，成功地解决了这些经典而困难的问题。1)识别结果的最终消费者是人。计算机与人之间的实时交互是可能的。3)具有长周期、多摄像头、大视场的视觉数据。我们开发了多个视觉信息系统，如具有智能摄像头控制功能的远程学习系统，具有眼接触恢复功能的混合现实社区空间，具有视觉信息汇总机制的个人事件记录系统，以及使用多个全方位图像传感器的视频监控系统。

Pattern recognition and understanding, PRU, is a fundamental technology to realize intelligent visual information media, which can select, summarize, and augment the visual information in the real world according to the need of each individual. The purpose of this project is to restructure the PRU technology, which has been developed for making automatic machines to replace humans, into a key technology in the multimedia fields where the information media are expected to support the human activity and to augment the human ability. The critical difference between the two cases is that a human consumes the output of PRU in multimedia systems, while a machine consumes it in automated systems for substituting humans.As common research targets of the project, we have focused on three problems that are typical and fundamental in the PRU for information media. L) The mechanism to handle the action and behavior of humans. 2) The mechanism to handle the ambiguous demand of humans. 3) The mechanism to handle the real world for which simple modeling is not applicable. These classic and difficult problems have been solved successfully by fully utilizing the following three assumptions. I) The final consumer of recognition results is a human. II) The real time interaction between computers and humane is possible. III) Visual data with long period, multiple cameras, wide field-of-vision are available.We have developed several visual information systems, such as a distance learning system with intelligent camera control capability, a mixed-reality community space with eye-contact recovery capability, a personal episode recording system with visual information summary mechanism, and a video surveillance system using multiple omni-directional image sensors.