Computer Vision: Teaching Machines to Recognize Images

Shown two photos of a person taken from different angles, most people will immediately recognize them as the same person. But it's not that easy for a computer because their brains are not as flexible as human brains.

Teaching computers to see more like humans is the job of Alan VanNevel and his team of scientists at a Navy Research Lab in Chino Lake. They've created some amazing pattern recognition programs - using math.

If we had an image of your face we'd have some numbers that represent your eyes and your nose and your chin, and we take all of those together and then use those to say, 'hey it's a face that we're looking at, explains VanNevel.