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Robotics Science

Virtual Robots Fooled By Visual Illusions 161

Posted by kdawson from the not-as-they-seem dept.
Roland Piquepaille alerts us to research out of University College London in which virtual robots, trained to "see" as we do, were duped by optical illusions the same way humans are. Here's one of the illusions the software system fell for.
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Virtual Robots Fooled By Visual Illusions More

Virtual Robots Fooled By Visual Illusions

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  • That's not an optical illusion (Score:3, Funny)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @05:49PM (#20804463) Homepage Journal
    That is just a difference in lighting.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Eddi3 ( 1046882 )
      That's the idea. The robot sees how we see, and thus fell for the illusion of green and orange, when both squares are green.
      • Reminds me of the old Wendy's commercial from the late 70's or early 80's

        (I can't remember the EGGZAKT food items, but the robot part I do.....)

        Customer: Excuse me, is this the cheeseburger with onions, or the hamburger with no mayo?

        Multi-lighted computer bank on wall: Hold... it.. up.. to... my... EYES... I-CAN'T--TELL...

    • Re:That's not an optical illusion (Score:5, Informative)

      by cathector ( 972646 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @05:59PM (#20804539)
      no, it's not a difference in lighting.
      the central squares are in fact the same color on your monitor, (pretty close to hex: 647316).

      this is very similar to this famous color constancy illusion [wikipedia.org].

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by alexhs ( 877055 )
        I think that's not what the parent meant.

        Lightning change through the day, so the actual color of reflecting objects also is changing. But the object didn't physically change and your brain "corrects" color, that is abstracts them (you wouldn't say your blue car to be blue the day and dark gray the night, it's simply blue).

        In the illusion at hand, left sphere is interpreted as being lit by a red light, while the red sphere is interpreted as being lit by a blue light.

        Of course, "Ceci ne sont pas des sph

        • Re:That's not an optical illusion (Score:5, Informative)

          by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Sunday September 30, 2007 @07:03PM (#20804873) Homepage

          Of course, "Ceci ne sont pas des sphères", only pixels, so the comparison on interpreted colors fails.

          That's what makes it an optical illusion. Your brain is interpreting visual information based on a context which causes a failed interpretation. That could be a definition for "optical illusion".

          These aren't colored spheres, and no one said they were colored spheres. It's just an arrangement of colored patches, arranged in such a way as to give your mind a bunch of visual cues that there are different colored lights shining on those patches, causing your brain to misjudge the actual color of those colored patches. Hence, it is an illusion.

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by icepick72 ( 834363 )
            Ya my brain had failed interpretation too ... and ... *sniff* *sniff* ... does anybody else smell burnt toast?
          • That's basically correct. There are numerous papers on how human vision, and much of animal vision, is based on edge detection. This allows an easy way to "average" an image and detect its color, or shape, by noticing those edges and comparing it to colors around it.

            Amusingly, the detailed knowledge of this is quite old, and goes back to papers by Jerry Lettvin and other researchers in the 1960's. It's fascinating work.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by alexhs ( 877055 )
            I agree it *is* an illusion.

            I was just commenting on the "no, it's not a difference in lightning", and the fact than some say or imply than an illusion illustrate a perception flaw .

            It *is* a difference in *perceived* lightning, and it works the way it should work, that is, color constancy [wikipedia.org] is not a flaw. In other words, it is a lightning illusion, so I thought the "no, it's not" wasn't accurate.

            Actually both comments are correct, but with a different point of view.

            One meant (I think), if the image is a phot

            • I see what you're saying, but I think the guy who said it wasn't an illusion was missing the point. He was saying, in effect, that it wasn't an illusion because if it was actually what it appeared to be, then the failed interpretation would be correct (i.e. if they were spheres under different colored lights, then the colors would actually be different).

              However, this is true of any illusion. If the illusory effect were true, then it would not be an illusion. The illusion in question is an illusion becau

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Tank720 ( 1164591 )
          It's not about lighting at all. It's about lateral inhibition. The neurons in your brain, when connected in a nural network, send inhibition signals to their neighboring neurons. Areas close on you retinas have neurons on the same part of the brain, so the squares surrounding the center square are going to activate neurons close to the ones you use to see the center square. Now the lighter squares send a stronger signal to the neurons surrounding the center square, thus sending MORE inhibition, thus ma

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by alexhs ( 877055 )
            You're making an interesting point. I don't think the effect is caused by lateral inhibition *only*.
            As another poster said, it's basically white balance.

            Now an interesting question would be : has lateral inhibition a role in white balancing ?

            Lateral inhibition is at a low level in perception, but overall lightning, and 3D construction are at higher levels.

            I will point to some other illusions :

            White's illusion [brown.edu]
            Searching for illusions, I found the illusion at hand is due to color constancy [wikipedia.org]

            BTW, welcome as a Sla

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        What's your point?

        If you put a white tile in a room with red light, do you want the robot to see a white tile? or a red tile?

        If you change the light, from red to blue, do you want the robot to still be able to identify it as the same tile?

        If yes, then this should be considered "a difference in lighting" and not an error on the part of the computer vision algorithm.
        • not an error on the part of the computer vision algorithm.

          When I first looked at the illusion I didn't see the spheres so much as one in red light and one in blue light, but though they were two different plaid buttons. The "trick" didn't work so well for me. I went back and looked at the illusion again and this time noticed the "puddles of light" at the bottom of each sphere and my visual cortex reinterpretated and the "trick" worked.(try looking at the illusion with the puddles of light covered up and t

        • That's not the same thing. When you put a white tile under a red light vs a blue light, then photograph it, the sensor (and our eyes) are going to register the red and blue light being reflected from the tile and it really will show up as red or blue (well, YMMV on the actual shade detected).

          In this case, the center squares in the image are the same exact color and it has nothing to do with lighting. The pixels don't lie. Our eyes (being tied to the crazy pattern-recognition system our visual cortexes

          • it has nothing to do with lighting

            It does. The eyes (and also the robot, apparently...) assume that both center squares are in a differently lit room, and "correct" the "real" color accordingly.

      • this is very similar to this famous color constancy illusion [wikipedia.org].

        That one still gets me. The first time I saw it I swore up and down that the colors were different. I opened it up in the GIMP and used to color picker to check it out, and didn't even totally believe it when I saw the exact same color values. I couldn't convince myself until I cropped part of square 'A' out and dragged it down to square 'B'. But the demo from today's article [lottolab.org] just doesn't do it for me. I looked at the discs for a while and couldn

    • More exactly : diffent surrounding... (Score:5, Informative)

      by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @06:58PM (#20804843) Homepage
      ...that's a difference in surrounding lightning.

      Human visual system (as most other senses) work not by absolute values (i.e.: it doesn't see that the color '#c0ff20' or whatever), but mainly by comparing the signal with signals from the surrounds.
      Thus what we technically see is that on the left object the central case looks much more "greener" than its surrounding, in the right object, the central case is "much more orange" than the surrounding. In fact, when the mask is enable, the colours do change from the point of view of the visual system : we were seeing contrast with two different surrounding, now we see a contrast with a third surround (mostly black). We see three different contrasts, even if from the computer's point of view the color is them same (the same RGB triplet / same intensity on your CRT/LCD)

      If the scientist are trying to build efficient visual systems, they are probably mimicking this "works-by-comparing" method that the nature is using.
      That's why we can recognise the same object, during day, during night, with weird lights, displayed on the screen (worse colour gamut) or on a print out (even worse color range). Because the relative difference stay the same, even if the colour as-seen-by-a-computer change.

      The same is valid for any other sens, or in fact, any other information that is processed by neurons. Everything works by comparing (across several signals, across time, etc.). There's no such thing as "an absolute value" in the information carried by neurons.

      That's also why all those "but the human eye can only x thousands of colors" (usually mocking the latest 32bit, 48bit, floating point or whatever color depth), are fundamentally wrong.
      Yes, the human visual system can only distinguish a hundred or so colors.... ...WHEN those colors are ISOLATED. (i.e: putting the name "red" "orange" "purple" on a color you see alone).
      When two colors are put next to each other, the human brain can suddenly distinguish much more subtle variations (each color would be considered as "brown" when seen alone, but next to each other, you can use thousands of different shade of brown and the eye will still see the difference).

      That's also why radiologist are fond of high contrast / big depth screens : because all those difference in shades of grey *can* be distinguished and *are* revellent for the diagnosis when displaying X-Ray pictures.
      • This is caused because the brain processes details about lighting, color, illumination, etc. Otherwise you'd see a piece of white paper with a shadow on it and think that the piece was half black and half gray. I don't remember what this phenomenon is called (I thought it was color persistence, but it apparently isn't). Also, most insects/small animals lack it, so they would perceive the same object under different lighting as a different object.
    • Arrrrgh! /Mallrats reference.

  • Hoax! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ynososiduts ( 1064782 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @05:50PM (#20804467)
    They could just be programmed to look as if they were falling for it! I smell conspiracy!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by heyguy ( 981995 )
      That's what I was thinking. If they are trained to see as we do, and they do recognize that those are the same color, they weren't trained properly.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by johnkzin ( 917611 )

      Or, maybe, they're faking it. So that we don't know how advanced they're getting, and wont see it coming when the robot revolution comes.

      So, let me go on the record now, saying: I welcome our soon-to-be-evolving robot overlords!
  • Anyone else think this was Richard Nixon's head attached to a robots body?

  • Colors sure look different... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gertlex ( 722812 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @05:54PM (#20804509)
    ... but I went ahead and verified with a pixel color id program (ColorPix) that they are the same color.

    • Re:Colors sure look different... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nmb3000 ( 741169 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @09:07PM (#20805737) Journal
      but I went ahead and verified with a pixel color id program (ColorPix) that they are the same color

      Indeed they are, but for me at least, this illusion didn't seem as "abrupt" as others do when it's shown that the perception is false. One that always stands out to me is this one (many have probably seen it):

      Without thinking too much, look at the colors of the A and B squares [imageshack.us] in this well-known image.
      Now, here's an animation I just made showing the truth [imageshack.us]. That's a solid, unchanging color going from A to B.

      I think this a much more drastic difference than the one in TFS, but of course YMMV :)
      • What I've always admired about that particular illusion is that, even though you think e.g. "it's the shadow that's making them look different!", you can keep deleting things from the image that you think are causing the illusion, all the way down to the point where only those two squares are left, and they will still look different the whole time.

        Maybe make an animation demonstrating that? ;-)
        • I hate to say it, but I think most people, when they say "remove the shadow" mean as if the lighting itself were changed.

          I can tell you right now if I set out a black and white chess board in real life, put something that casts a shadow near it, then moved the light so that no shadows were being cast on it, the light squares would all be one color and the dark squares would all be one color (but not the same color as the light squares).
          • I hate to say it, but I think most people, when they say "remove the shadow" mean as if the lighting itself were changed.

            I hate to say it, but that's not responsive to anything I said.

            • I hate to say it, but I think most people, when they say "remove the shadow" mean as if the lighting itself were changed.
              I hate to say it, but that's not responsive to anything I said.

              You explicitly mentioned deleting the shadow and/or object here:

              e.g. "it's the shadow that's making them look different!", you can keep deleting things from the image that you think are causing the illusion,

              • I'm aware of that, kid; it's just that I never referred to "most people saying 'remove the shadow'", just my personal reaction, and nothing I suggested involved clipping the shadow itself (which isn't easy), and at no point was I replying on a personal experience in which I could have misinterpreted a "remove the shadow" proposal. :-)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Aladrin ( 926209 )
        That's a great illusion. Even with your line drawn, I still see them as different colors, and the line as having a gradient. The only way I was able to see that they were the same color was to put the back of my right hand on the green color, and spread 3 fingers to surround those 2 blocks. Once I could no longer see all the hints for shadow and such, it was obvious they were the same color.

        I've seen that one before, the colors were so clearly 'different'.
      • Actually the funny thing to me about this one is that I can't "undo" the illusion nearly as easily as I can with most others. Even with the gray bar connecting the two squares, I still see them as distinct colors, and the bar itself as a gradient from dark to light.

  • We are one step closer... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Digitus1337 ( 671442 ) <(moc.liamtoh) (ta) (sutigid_kl)> on Sunday September 30, 2007 @05:55PM (#20804513) Homepage
    to being able to upset them with goatse. Maybe that is what starts the robot uprising...

  • Model of Reality (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SpectreBlofeld ( 886224 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @05:59PM (#20804537)
    From TFA: "The virtual robots in this study were driven solely by the statistics of their training history and used these statistics as the basis of their correct and subsequent incorrect decisions. Similarly, we believe the human brain generates perceptions of the world in the same way, by encoding the statistical relationships between images and scenes in our past visual experience and uses this as the basis for behaving usefully and consistently towards the sources of visual images." So the robot vision was created as a model of human vision, and it succeeded at doing so. That's sort of interesting, I suppose, but what does it tell us? That we were right about the way human vision works? Seems to me that the point here is really that in some ways, human vision is 'broken' and that maybe it isn't the best apparatus for machines to use. If we want to welcome our robotic overlords, we should be improving on the vision model, not trying to give machines the same flawed framework.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bentcd ( 690786 )

      Seems to me that the point here is really that in some ways, human vision is 'broken' and that maybe it isn't the best apparatus for machines to use. If we want to welcome our robotic overlords, we should be improving on the vision model, not trying to give machines the same flawed framework.

      When humans have the vision that they do, it is likely that this is at or reasonably close to some local maximum in the space of all possible vision systems (that's what evolution tends to do). It isn't unreasonable to assume that this is a relatively efficient tradeoff point between processing requirements and results biased towards human needs. If so, then it makes sense to use this as the starting point for machine vision as it may turn out to be a efficient solution for most of their needs as well.

      Of c

    • So the robot vision was created as a model of human vision, and it succeeded at doing so. That's sort of interesting, I suppose, but what does it tell us? That we were right about the way human vision works? Seems to me that the point here is really that in some ways, human vision is 'broken' and that maybe it isn't the best apparatus for machines to use. If we want to welcome our robotic overlords, we should be improving on the vision model, not trying to give machines the same flawed framework.

      You've na

    • Seems to me that the point here is really that in some ways, human vision is 'broken' and that maybe it isn't the best apparatus for machines to use.

      The problem is that we don't have any better example of working intelligence to go off of. Sure its kind of like building an airplane that flaps its wings like a bird instead of a fixed wing plane works better, but general intelligence is very tricky. Now evolution did give us birds, but we found many other examples of aerodynamics that didn't involve birds ear

  • Welcome? (Score:5, Funny)

    by CriminalNerd ( 882826 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @06:01PM (#20804553)
    I'm not sure about you guys, but at the moment, I'm kind of doubtful in welcoming our new robotic overlords. I mean, I thought they were supposed to be superior to us and not be fool by petty illusions...

    • Re:Welcome? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Gonzoisme ( 1023685 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @06:18PM (#20804643)
      I think it is important to problem small weaknesses into our robots. You know, just in case.
      • OK, +1 Funny, I understand.
        But, +1 Insightful ? Are you people really that scared of an autonomously intelligent being you have no control over? Look around you they're everywhere! (OK, we could plausibly argue over whether the beings around you currently qualify as intelligent, nevertheless I think you get my point)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gd2shoe ( 747932 )
          Joking aside, it's a "karma" thing.

          +1 Funny doesn't add karma, while +1 Insightful does. This means that someone could be at +5 Funny, and have lost karma because of it. A lot of moderators refuse to use the funny mod because of this.
          • Then those moderators are idiots!

            Come on, there is just nothing else I can say to this kind of thinking.

            (Yes, I also get to be moderator. And when there is even one guy complaining about wrong mods, it means some one is having trouble following the mod-system, and that means it is broken. So, people, worry about your own karma please!)

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by gd2shoe ( 747932 )
              That's just heartless.

              If I tell a joke and get modded:
              +4 funny
              -2 offtopic (because the mods didn't get the joke)

              Then I wind up at +3 funny, and loose 2 points of karma. Yes, this is broken.

              Actually caring about others does not make someone an idiot.
              • Sorry if I sounded arrogant. It wasn't my intentions, my intentions was good (- Eminem) :)

                For -2 offtopic modding, we have got meta-moderating. But I really have no problem with people modding stuff because they do not understand (I give +interesting to such posts myself). But I have seen too many posts with +5 Funny and also intersting, like a "gesture". I believe that there are too many posts which are informative/interesting/insightful but won't be modded up while people with excellent karma get charity.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
          L'enfer, c'est les autres.

          Plenty of people are scared of other people, to the point of introducing anti-terror laws.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Minwee ( 522556 )
        Definitely. That's why every time I design a Kill-bot, I make sure that it has a pre-programmed kill limit.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by David_W ( 35680 )

          That's why every time I design a Kill-bot, I make sure that it has a pre-programmed kill limit.

          That's a good idea! That way, all you have to do is send wave after wave of your own men after it. Once it reaches it's limit it'll shut down. Ingenious!

    • Of course the problem is that the "robot" model used was Chief Knock-A-Homer.

  • Its called white balance.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AgNO3 ( 878843 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @06:06PM (#20804583) Homepage
    and your eyes do it to. Which is why even sodium vapor lights don't look as yellow as they really are by the human eye. Turn off the white balance on the robots and I bet you they will see them as the same color. Add the average inverse color as a background for each color and your eyes will see them totally different. IE blue behind the orange and orange behind the blue. really stupid test.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ncy ( 1164535 )
      i agree. it's more accurate to say that the *algorithm*, used by this particular group of robots, to distinguish colors has some of the same faults that human eyes do.
    • But you don't want them to see the same color, because in the computer vision application it is important to deduce the object color. You can't just measure the reflected light. The optical illusion shows that, in our attempt to find the object color, we "guess" the light color from the colors of the surrounding scene and compensate for it, and so do the robots with automatic white balance. We're still fooled by light sources which aren't approximately black body radiators and robots face the same problems
    • Really more an artifact of retinal fatigue, I'd say.

  • Make them explode (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bender Unit 22 ( 216955 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @06:10PM (#20804605) Journal
    show them a Escher staircase.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by arth1 ( 260657 )
      Good robotic overlords like the Daleks will never be stopped by a staircase, Escheresque or not - they simply demolish the building.

      Demolish! Exterminate! Exterminate!

  • Now try this: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Wilson_6500 ( 896824 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @06:13PM (#20804625)
    Cross your eyes, line up the two squares so they're offset by a few millimeters, and then hit the mask. What I saw was that the squares retained their seeming discoloration--until I uncrossed my eyes.
    • I'm laughing at the prospect of thousands of Slashdotters around the globe leaning in close to their monitors and crossing their eyes.

      Reminds me of this XKCD comic [xkcd.com] (new window)
    • Actually, even if you hit the mask first, and only then cross your eyes, they still appear different. At least they did for me. Not sure what it means though.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mr Z ( 6791 )

        My left and right eyes see color slightly differently, and I imagine I'm not alone. In my case, one eye sees slightly more saturated colors than the other. So, when you cross your eyes and they end up looking different, you're probably seeing the effects of a slightly different color response in each eye.

    • I wonder if you're getting a kind of Persistence Of Color effect.

      Here's one my favs:

      http://www.johnsadowski.com/big_spanish_castle.php [johnsadowski.com]
      • Persisence of color, as I understand it, is due to phosphors in the eyes becoming saturated and taking a finite time to adjust to a non-colored scene. What we're seeing here is actually the brain's misinterpretation of a scene persisting past the point at which, normally, the brain "realizes" its mistake. It's the difference between a phenomenon that happens in the chemistry of the eye versus that of the brain.

    • What I saw was that the squares retained their seeming discoloration--until I uncrossed my eyes.

      That's funny. I saw plaid-garbed boobies.

  • This is why I turn my auto-white-balance off in my digital camera. If I need to adjust the color, I'll do it later in Photoshop. (Another reason to shoot in RAW mode.) -- Carey

    • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by SocialEngineer ( 673690 )
      Same here, basically. I set my white balance manually before the shot, though, so I get a close approximation in my previews (I shoot Raw + SHQ JPG).
  • To me this is an important step.
    It means that we might describe biological vision (ours and most animals) in an more efficient manner. You don't need millions of layered algorithms duplicating evolution. Instead, vision can be described much simpler. We can derive the optimal version of this type of vision and see what holds for biology. We can also try and develop robotics that emulates optimal biological methods and see how well it meshes with our existential experiences of reality. If it meshes well
  • Very cool article. But, now I'm curious how virtual robots will perceive if color blindness was applied...

  • The colors in the illusion look the same... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @06:42PM (#20804747)
    But then again, being color blind makes a lot of things look the same that shouldn't be...

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pcgabe ( 712924 )
      I came here to post the exact same experience. I'm red-green colorblind; they look the same to me.

      OT question, since you're also colorblind and I'm curious: does your girlfriend wear makeup? See, mine does.

      WHO IS SHE WEARING IT FOR?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Laxitive ( 10360 )
        >> WHO IS SHE WEARING IT FOR?

        Presumably herself.

        Slashdot lameness filter bypass:
        Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
        Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
        Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
        Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
    • Oh yeah, way to make us non-color blind people feel inadequate.

      You insensitive clod!!!
  • they are also susceptible to the illusion of "beer goggles"? ...Next thing you know, your personal robot's software has it waking up in bed with your new Dyson vacuum and a strange Toaster! [There must be a Bender joke in here somewhere] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bender_(Futurama) [wikipedia.org]
  • Look at this one [lottolab.org]. If you see more clearly for "true similarity" on the red pipe (?), then you will notice slightly a bullshit. :)

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      then you will notice slightly a bullshit. :)

      A new engrish catchphrase is born!

  • Take a look at http://www.lottolab.org/Visual%20Demos/Demo%204.html [lottolab.org]

    The site says the surfaces are "physically identical." I call BS. They are identical only in the sense that they have (assuming this is a faithful rendering of something) the same irradiance per unit solid angle hitting the viewer's eye. They are, in fact, physically different surfaces -- look at the top left corner of each piece, which are facing roughly the same directions and so are similarly lit. The top face is dark and lit more bri
  • Since we are not born with flashlights glued to our heads (although in Soviet Russia one can be obtained by getting into a fistfight), we must compensate for the tone of ambient lighting. This correction that we easily do in our heads but must be applied manually on digital cameras in fact allows us to determine true color of the objects more accurately in natural settings. Therefore I wouldn't call this an optical illusion any more than the fact that our eyes become more sensitive at night.

  • Can someone explain what this teaches us? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by __aailob1448 ( 541069 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @07:06PM (#20804889) Journal
    I'm struggling to find the utility of the study. So, if we learned to see differently, we could see the world in a way different enough to not be fooled by certain optical illusions, and probably be fooled by others?

    Assuming it is possible to change the way a human sees without breaking the brain. A popular theory on evolution is that we evolved our brains to better analyze visual data coming in. We're not deceived as easily by certain camouflages animals use. Stripes, dots, color, etc.

    Confirms what we thought about the way we learn to see, perhaps? That'd make sense.

    • Re:Can someone explain what this teaches us? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by David_Shultz ( 750615 ) on Sunday September 30, 2007 @10:38PM (#20806221)
      I'm struggling to find the utility of the study. So, if we learned to see differently, we could see the world in a way different enough to not be fooled by certain optical illusions, and probably be fooled by others?

      The program wasn't designed to detect optical illusions -it was a by-product of the training the system went through. The fact that it was tricked by a similar illusion without being programmed to do so might be taken as suggestive that our learning mechanisms are similar to the ones used by the program. From TFA:

      The virtual robots in this study were driven solely by the statistics of their training history and used these statistics as the basis of their correct and subsequent incorrect decisions. Similarly, we believe the human brain generates perceptions of the world in the same way, by encoding the statistical relationships between images and scenes in our past visual experience and uses this as the basis for behaving usefully and consistently towards the sources of visual images
  • I'm normally affected by optical illusions just like everyone, but I don't see it here - the center squares of both discs appear equally light green to me. Any ideas? I don't think I'm colorblind...
  • If Virtual Robots are fooled by Visual Illusions, what does that tell us about real robots?

    In the virtual world I created, Smorgons are 6 meters tall, shoot acid out of their noses, and have been known to breed 10 offspring in a month.

    In the real work, however Smorgons don't exist, so therefore I must conclude that virtual tells us nothing about actual.

  • Ok, so what if your robot is fooled by some obscure optical illusions-- other 'illusions' (or for lack of a better term, optical phenomena) are far more problematic- consider the problem of recognizing that you're looking at a mirror and not just a big room. Or the problem of 'seeing' the subtle reflections cast by a transparent medium like a window, in order to recognize the presence of an obstacle. Speaking as someone who's done a fair amount of work on autonomous robot exploration, these are big unsolve
  • If we ever build AI that's able to perform the kind of "intelligent thought" that we humans are capable of, then this is exactly the kind of thing we should expect to run into more and more. I've always contended that the closer we come to building computer circuits that mimic the processing within the human brain, the less that output will be what we generally consider to be computer-like (logical, predictable, mathematical).

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