The Gloss of Glossy Things

Work reported herein was conducted at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology research program supported in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense and monitored by the Office of Naval Research under Contract Number N00014-70-A-0362-0003. Vision Flashes are informal papers intended for internal use.This paper discusses the visual phenomenon of gloss. It is shown that the perception of this phenomenon derives from two effects (1) that the image reflected by a glossy surface lies in a different plane from the surface, and (2) that the highlights in a glossy scene are abnormally bright. The perception of gloss seems to arise as a side effect of depth perception and lightness judgment.MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Robotics Section Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agenc