Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Google's 'Omega Man' Street View Solution
Google has come up with a drastic solution to the privacy problem posed by litigious Americans appearing in their Street View scenes: remove every pedestrian from every picture.
(Google Street View vanishing pedestrian)
Google's Street View vans use nine roof-mounted cameras to take regular shots of the scene around them. These are then stitched together to produce a near-seamless panoramic view. But automatically removing people from thousands of varied images, each showing different scenes, is a challenge.Flores's software first has to detect any pedestrians in a scene. This is done using a standard object-recognition algorithm called implicit shape model (ISM), which was developed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. "The idea is to find a rough contour of pedestrians," says Bastian Leibe, a codeveloper of ISM who is now at RWTH Aachen University. Because there is so much variability in human appearance, the algorithm takes a probabilistic approach--looking for similarities between the shapes in images and hundreds of images of pedestrians that it has been trained to recognize.
Once a pedestrian has been identified and cut from an image, the hole left behind has to be filled in. Flores's software does this by using photographs captured before and after the image in question by Google's Street View vans.
The first time that I ever saw an American city in full detail - but without any people in it - was in the 1972 movie classic The Omega Man. Charleton Heston plays the Google Street View driver in this opening scene.
(Heston drives through an empty city)
Via Technology Review.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 8/11/2010)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 2 )
Related News Stories - (" Artificial Intelligence ")
AIs Turn Marxist Under Bad Management
'It was a general strike of the robots...' - Harl Vincent, 1934.
Rogue AI Replicated Itself
'Sapiro’s computer just kept dialing at random, hanging up on humans, until it got a fellow computer of the same type as itself.' - Gregory Benford, 1970.
When AI Takes Its First Breath
Any suggestions?
Japan's AI Buddharoid Automonks
'...each of them is a neural mapping of the mind of a Tibetan monk who actually lived.' - Ray Naylor, 2022.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
AIs Turn Marxist Under Bad Management
'It was a general strike of the robots...'
Moscow Attacked By Hundreds Of Drones
'It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes...'
Nifty Folding Electric Bicycles!
'Separate paths were provided for them...'
FTC: Says Ring Employees Illegally Surveilled Customers
'Then she looked up with a smile and moved closer to the camera.'
Switzerland May Cap Population At Ten Million
'The population of Castle Hagedorn was fixed...'
Project Silica Offers 'Long-Term' Digital Storage
'... folios and tapes and playable discs of platinum alloy.'
Can 'Tactical Umbrellas' Shield One From Drones
'... another corner of his mind began to think about the shields.'
Crystalline Structures In Space, You Say?
A massive space borne lifeform from ST:TNG.
Garçon! A Menu For Artemis II, S'il Vous Plaît
'Michel Ardan, as a Frenchman, was declared chief cook, an important function, which raised no rival.'
Amazing Photonic Crystal Light Sail
'That sail will be twenty thousand miles at the wide part.'
Blue Collar AI Goes To Work To Mine Its Own Crypto
Blue collar bot.
Rogue AI Replicated Itself
'Sapiro’s computer just kept dialing at random, hanging up on humans, until it got a fellow computer of the same type as itself.'
HandelBot Helps Two-Handed Robots Learn Piano
'I request that you feed the correlation between those dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.'
Woven Fiber Electronic Skin For Robots
'... all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
When AI Takes Its First Breath
Any suggestions?
Chinese Aircar Light And Airy, Not For Blade Runners
Daytime version.
