Challenge for Vision: Seeing a Toy Crane
Crane-episodic-memory
Aaron Sloman
Last updated: 8 Mar 2009; 23 Oct 2011; 12 Jun 2013 (links added)
Installed: 10 Jul 2007

NOTE:

This file is http://tinyurl.com/CogMisc/crane/
It is available as a stand alone PDF file Seeing_a_Toy_Crane.pdf

A draft paper closely related to this is here:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cosy/papers/#tr0801
TR-0801 Architectural and representational requirements for seeing processes and affordances. (PDF)

For a partial overview of other online material here see
http://tinyurl.com/CogMisc/AREADME.html

Introduction

• Seeing cups spoons and saucers

• Seeing impossible objects

• More impossible objects

• Seeing and thinking about loops in strings

http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/talks/#compmod07
Architectural and representational requirements for seeing processes and affordances.

Presented at BBSRC funded Workshop on

Closing the gap between neurophysiology and behaviour: A computational modelling approach
University of Birmingham, UK
May 31st-June 2nd 2007

The polyflap challenge is also relevant http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cosy/papers/#tr0605

The Crane Challenge(s)

The challenge is this: for every identifiable entity in any picture, small or large, find in other pictures

• Other entities of the same type (at various levels of abstraction)

• The very same entity (e.g. the same nut, or bolt, or wheel, or hook)

• Specify the 3-D position and pose of the object in the scene

• Describe its 3-D relations to other objects in the scene

• Find whether its shadow is visible in the scene, and if so identify the relevant portion of shadow.

Related challenges:

• Wherever a crank handle is visible, work out what the consequences will be of turning it in either possible direction.

• Describe how the viewpoint is related to the objects in the scene, including the floor.

• Describe how the crane in the photographs differs from the crane depicted in the manual (see picture at end).

The Pictures

Picture {2}

Picture {3}

Picture {4}

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Picture {9}

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Picture {12}

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Picture {19}

The diagram in the instruction manual.
(Not followed precisely.)

Meccano Online Web pages

http://www.internationalmeccanomen.org.uk
Home page

http://www.internationalmeccanomen.org.uk/EXHIB/Henley2008/
Pictures showing some amazing things built by Meccano enthusiasts in 2008.

See also

http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cosy/photos/penrose-3d

http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cosy/movies/sample-actions/

A multi-picture challenge for theories of vision, and machine vision systems
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/multipic-challenge.pdf

Maintained by Aaron Sloman
School of Computer Science
The University of Birmingham