Artificial perception of actions

This paper has to do with the visual perception of actions that are discretely conceptualized. The intent is to develop a vision system that produces causal or intentional descriptions of actions, thus providing the conceptual underpinnings of natural langu age descriptions. The computational theory is developed in linking a "point of action definition " analysis to an analysis of how the physical events will elicit appropriate verbal descriptions. Out of this theory of direct computational linkages between physical events, points of action definition, and verbal descriptions, comes a theory of perception that provides some insight into how to go about constructing systems that can watch the world and report on what they are watching. Artificial Perception of Actions 2 The aim of this research is to develop a machine that interprets visually observed events as discrete actions. Every discrete action is a momentary causal or intentional description of movement. To insure the system’s veracity and usefulness, the description and thereby the "perception of action " must provide a faithful mapping to natural language. For example, the machine might verbally report that some person is now walking toward the robot, that a person has left his station hurriedly, that a machine operator i