Principal Investigator Pawan Sinha
In a series of studies, we have investigated the nature of information used in ecologically important tasks of object recognition. Of primary interest to us is the recognition of faces when image quality is degraded due to refractive errors, amblyopia or large viewing distances. We have estimated lower-bounds on the image resolution needed for face detection and identification, and titrated the contribution of cues such as pigmentation and configuration. The resulting data have not only provided clues regarding the nature of representations the brain uses for achieving its robust performance, but have also served as starting points for the creation of robust artificial vision systems.