Active Vision and Adaptive Learning

Active vision is identified by a closed loop linking sensing with acting. Thus, an active vision system's behaviour is directly determined by what it senses. To date however, the responses produced by active vision systems have tended to be relatively low-level, generally designed to facilitate improved sensing, by enhancing the duration or speed of object tracking, for example, or optimising the focussed application of more intensive image processing. This is probably adequate if the active vision system is designed as a front end to other processes or to specialised application systems, or if it is a demonstration in support of a theoretical vision model. However, this leaves unanswered the problems of i) how to select an appropriate action when many different alternatives are available, and ii) how best to modify the behavioural repertoire of the system. These problems are especially important in two situations: firstly, when an autonomous system faces a novel situation and must res..