OnSeeingStuffThePerceptionofMaterialsbyHumans-MIT.docVIP

On Seeing Stuff: The Perception of Materials by Humans and Machines Edward H. Adelson Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NE20-444H, Cambridge MA 02139 ABSTRACT The perception of objects is a well-developed field, but the perception of materials has been studied rather little. This is surprising given how important materials are for humans, and how important they must become for intelligent robots. We may learn something by looking at other fields in which material appearance is recognized as important. Classical artists were highly skilled at generating convincing materials. The simulation of material appearance is a topic of great importance in 3-D computer graphics. Some fields, such as mineralogy, use the concept of a “habit,” which is a combination of shape and texture, and which may be used for characterizing certain objects or materials. We have recently taken steps toward material recognition by machines, using techniques derived from the domain of texture analysis. Perception, materials, reflectance, BRDF. Introduction: things and stuff Ask someone what vision is for and you may get an answer about recognizing objects. Few people will tell you that vision is about recognizing materials. Yet materials are just as important as objects are. Our world involves steel and glass, paper and plastic, food and drink, leather and lace, ice and snow, not to mention blood sweat and tears. Nonetheless, if you peruse the scientific literature in human and machine vision, you will also find a great deal of attention paid to the problem of recognizing objects, and very little to the problem of recognizing materials. Why should this be? Perhaps it is related to the general preference we have for talking about “things” rather than “stuff.’ Linguists distinguish count nouns, such as chairs, from mass nouns, such as snow. Chairs are objects that can be counted, while snow is a material of unspecified extent. Our world contains both things and stuff, but things tend