Computer Vision

How would a human think of this picture? We might think of this picture as something like “an orange smiley face with black eyes, lighter colored at the top than the bottom.”

What would a computer think? A computer would think of this picture as a collection of tiny colored squares called “pixels”.

Pixels This picture is a square with 233 pixels on each side. Each pixel has its own color. This picture has yellow pixels, orange pixels, black pixels, and white pixels. Pixels are also used in printed pictures

GYRE and Image Processing Any time a computer wants to make a decision about a picture, it looks at the pixels. This is usually called “Image Processing”. GYRE has to look at two different pictures and guess how much the objects in each picture have moved. It needs to be able to find the same objects in each picture somehow. How should it do that?

The Experiment Nobody knows the best way yet! We’ll be testing two different methods, but we’re not sure which one will work best.

Thinking about Color A pixel can be any one of colors GYRE needs pictures with fewer colors so it is easier to pick out objects. How about eight colors?

Color Examples  Which color is each pixel most like?  Will all eight colors be used for this picture?

Finding Colors If we mark every pixel with the color it is most like, we get large blocks of color. GYRE can look for how these big pieces of each color move from picture to picture

Thinking about Shape Another way to tell objects apart is with shapes. GYRE needs to figure out where the edges of shapes are. How can it do this from pixels?

Shape Examples Are some of these edges easier to see than others?

Finding Edges An edge looks like rows of pixels of two different colors next to each other. If the two colors are very different, the edge is easier to see – for humans or computers. GYRE colors all the pixels with dark edges black, all the pixels with medium edges gray, and all the pixels with no edges white.

Conclusion We don’t actually know which Image Processing style will work better. We’ll be testing them in flight.