Abstract
One of the first steps of any visual system is that of locating suitable interest points, ‘salient regions’, in the scene, to detect events, and eventually to direct gaze toward these locations. In the last few years, object-based visual attention models have received an increasing interest in computational neuroscience and in computer vision, the problem, in this case, being that of creating a model of ‘objecthood’ that eventually guides a saliency mechanism. We present here an model of visual attention based on the definition of ‘proto-objects’ and show its instantiation on a humanoid robot. Moreover we propose a biological plausible way to learn certain Gestalt rules that can lead to proto-objects.
This work was supported by EU project RobotCub (IST- 2004-004370) and CONTACT (NEST-5010).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Cave, K., Bichot, N.: Visuospatial attention: beyond a spotlight model. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 6, 204–223 (1999)
Kawato, M.: Internal models for motor control and trajectory planning. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 9, 718–727 (1999)
O’Regan, J.: Solving the “real” mysteries of visual perception: the world as an outside memory. Canadian Journal of Psychology 46, 461–488 (1992)
Maturana, R., Varela, F.: Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. D.Reidel Publishing Co., Dordecht (1980)
van Gelder, T., Port, R.: It’s about time: An overview of the dynamical approach to cognition. In: van Gelder, T., Port, R. (eds.) Mind as motion - Explorations in the Dynamics of Cognition, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (1995)
Craighero, L., Fadiga, L., Rizzolatti, G., Umilta’, C.: Action for perception: a motor-visual attentional effect. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 25, 1673–1692 (1999)
Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., Gallese, V., Rizzolatti, G.: Visuomotor neurons: ambiguity of the discharge or ’motor’ perception? Int. J. Psychophysiol. 35, 165–177 (2000)
Fischer, M.H., Hoellen, N.: Space- and object-based attention depend on motor intention. The Journal of General Psychology 131, 365–378 (2004)
Scholl, B.J.: Objects and attention: the state of the art. Cognition 80, 1–46 (2001)
Rensink, R.A., O’Regan, J.K., Clark, J.J.: To see or not to see: The need for attention to perceive changes in scenes. Psychological Science 8(5), 368–373 (1997)
Rensink, R.A.: Seeing, sensing, and scrutinizing. Vision Research 40(10–12), 1469–1487 (2000)
Palmer, S., Rock, I.: Rethinking perceptual organization: the role of uniform connectedness. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 1(1), 29–55 (1994)
Treisman, A.M., Gelade, G.: A feature-integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology 12(1), 97–136 (1980)
Milanese, R., Gil, S., Pun, T.: Attentive mechanisms for dynamic and static scene analysis. Optical Engineering 34, 2428–2434 (1995)
Itti, L., Koch, C., Niebur, E.: A model of saliency-based visual attention for rapid scene analysis. IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 20, 1254–1259 (1998)
Itti, L., Koch, C.: Computational modeling of visual attention. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2(3), 194–203 (2001)
Sun, Y., Fisher, R.: Object-based visual attention for computer vision. Artificial Intelligence 146, 77–123 (2003)
Pylyshyn, Z.W.: Visual indexes, preconceptual objects, and situated vision. Cognition 80(1-2), 127–158 (2001)
Metta, G., Fitzpatrick, P.: Early integration of vision and manipulation. Adaptive Behavior 11, 109–128 (2003)
Orabona, F.: Learning and Adptation in Computer Vision. PhD thesis, University of Genoa (2007)
Sandini, G., Tagliasco, V.: An anthropomorphic retina-like structure for scene analysis. Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing 14, 365–372 (1980)
Wolfe, J.M., Gancarz, G.: Guided search 3.0. In: Lakshminarayanan, V. (ed.) Basic and Clinical Applications of Vision Science, pp. 189–192. Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, Netherlands (1996)
Smirnakis, S.M., Berry, M.J., Warland, D.K., Bialek, W., Meister, M.: Adaptation of retinal processing to image contrast and spatial scale. Nature 386, 69–73 (1997)
Billock, V.A.: Cortical simple cells can extract achromatic information from the multiplexed chromatic and achromatic signals in the parvocellular pathway. Vision Research 35, 2359–2369 (1995)
Mallot, H.A., von Seelen, W., Giannakopoulos, F.: Neural mapping and space-variant image processing. Neural Networks 3(3), 245–263 (1990)
Li, X., Yuan, T., Yu, N., Yuan, Y.: Adaptive color quantization based on perceptive edge protection. Pattern Recognition Letters 24, 3165–3176 (2003)
Eckhorn, R., Bauer, R., Jordan, W., Brosch, M., Kruse, M., Munk, W., Reitboeck, H.J.: Coherent oscillations: A mechanism of feature linking in the visual cortex? Biological Cybernetics 60, 121–130 (1988)
Gray, C.M., König, P., Engel, A.K., Singer, W.: Oscillatory responses in cat visual cortex exhibit inter-columnar synchronization which reflects global stimulus properties. Nature 338, 334–336 (1989)
De Smet, P., Pires, R.L.V.: Implementation and analysis of an optimized rainfalling watershed algorithm. In: Proc. of SPIE, VCIP’2000, vol. 3974, pp. 759–766 (2000)
Wan, S., Higgins, W.: Symmetric region growing. IEEE Trans. on Image Processing 12(9), 1007–1015 (2003)
Viola, P., Jones, M.J.: Robust real-time face detection. International Journal of Computer Vision 57(2), 137–154 (2004)
Melcher, D., Kowler, E.: Shapes, surfaces and saccades. Vision Research 39, 2929–2946 (1999)
Tipper, S.P.: Object-centred inhibition of return of visual attention. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 43A, 289–298 (1991)
Itti, L., Koch, C.: Feature combination strategies for saliency-based visual attention systems. Journal of Electronic Imaging 10(1), 161–169 (2001)
Natale, L., Orabona, F., Berton, F., Metta, G., Sandini, G.: From sensorimotor development to object perception. In: Proc. of the 5th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, Tsukuba, Japan, pp. 226–231 (2005)
Field, D.J., Hayes, A., Hess, R.F.: Contour integration by the human visual system: evidence for local ”association field”. Vision Research 33(2), 173–193 (1993)
Schmidt, K., Goebel, R., Löwel, S., Singer, W.: The perceptual grouping criterion of collinearity is reflected by anisotropies of connections in the primary visual cortex. European Journal of Neuroscience 5(9), 1083–1084 (1997)
Grossberg, S., Mingolla, E.: Neural dynamics of perceptual grouping: textures, boundaries, and emergent segmentations. Percept. Psychophys. 38, 141–171 (1985)
Guy, G., Medioni, G.: Inferring global perceptual contours from local features. Int. J. of Computer Vision 20, 113–133 (1996)
Li, Z.: A neural model of contour integration in the primary visual cortex. Neural Computation 10, 903–940 (1998)
Sigman, M., Cecchi, G.A., Gilbert, C.D., Magnasco, M.O.: On a common circle: Natural scenes and gestalt rules. PNAS 98(4), 1935–1940 (2001)
Martin, D., Fowlkes, C., Tal, D., Malik, J.: A database of human segmented natural images and its application to evaluating segmentation algorithms and measuring ecological statistics. In: Proc. of ICCV 2001, vol. 2, pp. 416–423 (2001)
Morrone, M., Burr, D.: Feature detection in human vision: A phase dependent energy model. Proc. Royal Soc. of London B 235, 221–245 (1988)
Knutsson, H.: Representing local structure using tensors. In: Proceedings 6th Scandinavian Conference on Image Analysis, Oulu, Finland, pp. 244–251 (1989)
Prodöhl, C., Würtz, R.P., von der Malsburg, C.: Learning the gestalt rule of collinearity from object motion. Neural Computation 15, 1865–1896 (2003)
Coppola, D.M., Purves, H.R., McCoy, A.N., Purves, D.: The distribution of oriented contours in the real world. PNAS 95, 4002–4006 (1998)
Fitzpatrick, P., Metta, G.: Grounding vision through experimental manipulation. Philos. trans. - Royal Soc., Math. phys. eng. sci. 361(1811), 2185–2615 (2003)
Martin, D., Fowlkes, C., Malik, J.: Learning to detect natural image boundaries using local brightness, color and texture cues. IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 26(5), 530–549 (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Orabona, F., Metta, G., Sandini, G. (2007). A Proto-object Based Visual Attention Model. In: Paletta, L., Rome, E. (eds) Attention in Cognitive Systems. Theories and Systems from an Interdisciplinary Viewpoint. WAPCV 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4840. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77343-6_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77343-6_13
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-77342-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-77343-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)