Lecture notes in computer science - Introduction

Our understanding of object recognition can address the needs of only the m ost stylised applications. There is no prospect of the automated motorcars of Dickmanns et al. knowing what is in front of them anytime soon; searcher s for pictures of the pope kissing a baby must search on a combination of t ext, guesswork and patience; current vision based HCl research relies on hi ghly structured backgrounds; and we may safely guess that the intelligence community is unlikely to be able to dispense with image analysts anytime so on. This volume contains a series of contributions that attack important pr oblems in recognition.