What is Computer Vision – Introduction

Given the image below if humans are enquired to list the objects and entities present within, they will come up with a list of different words such as car, boy, owl, cage, wipers and so on without thinking a lot. Additionally, when asked to describe the picture they would easily say that it is a clip from the famous Hollywood movie Harry Potter. 


These are two very simple tasks that any person or a child with an average level of intelligence can accomplish. However, in the background a very complex process takes place. The human vision not only involves our eyes and the visual cortex but also the mental model of the objects, understanding of the concepts and experiences that we achieve through numerous interactions that we make with different entities of this world in our lives.  

Camera shots can snap pictures of resolutions and details that much farther outperforms the human vision system. Computers can also detect and measure the color differences with very high accuracy but, being able to make sense of the content of such images is a challenge that computer systems have been struggling with for years. 

Computer Vision is the field of computer science that focuses on replicating the human vision system and enabling computers to identify objects and entities in the images and videos in the same way that humans do. 

Applications of Computer Vision

1 Self - Driving Cars 



Computer Vision makes it possible for the self driving cars to make sense of their surroundings. Cameras present on the car capture videos from different angles around the car and feed it to the computer vision software, which then processes the image in real time to find the extremities of the roads, read traffic signs, detect other cars bikes and also the people walking on the road. The self driving car then steers its way on the streets and highways avoiding the obstacles and driving the passengers to the destination safely.

2 Facial Recognition  Applications


Computer Vision also plays an important role in facial recognition applications, it is a technology that makes it possible for computers to match the images of peoples faces in order to cross-verify their identities. Algorithms in computer vision detect the features of faces in an image and then compare them with the database of face profiles. Certain devices make use of facial recognition to verify the identity of their owners. (example - face lock application in smartphones) Social media applications make use of facial recognition to detect and tag users. (example - auto-tag feature in Facebook) 

3 Online Picture Libraries 

Online picture libraries like google photos make use of computer vision to detect entities and objects in the image and automatically classify it based on the content that is present within. 

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In this post we have had a basic idea of what computer vision is and discussed some of its prominent applications. Next we will understand how a computer actually reads and image. 

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