9303980 Bajcsy This is the first year of a three-year continuing award to support collaboration of researchers in four U.S. institutions (University of Pennsylvania, University of Rochester, University of Maryland, and University of Massachusetts) with their European colleagues engaged in the ESPRIT-funded research project entitled "Vision-As- Process ". The collaborative objective is to develop a practical theory of perception control in active vision, while pooling expertise and avoiding unnecessary duplication of effort. The broad areas of concentration are development of novel physical and computer hardware, conceptual frameworks, and software tools for integrated vision/robotic systems, which include an actively controlled binocular camera head and various actuators for affecting the external world. The collaboration covers four subareas: Control of perception in active vision, Interpretation of dynamic scenes, Robust image and scene measures, and Dynamic gaze control and image formation. For each subarea a mailing list for information exchange will be created, scientific meetings held, and techniques and associated experiments organized. Two to three week partner-to-partner visits will facilitate intense collaboration on the specific topics. US Ph.D. students will spend time in EEC laboratories as part of an exchange agreement. Both sides will benefit from a demonstrated real-time active vision system, and development of a common framework for integration and control experiments. Such a system will enlarge the variety of experiments within the same class of problems and the range of applications in different domains. The results will be made widely accessible, through planned publication of a book on the theoretical and experimental results, journal papers, and presentations at conferences. ***
