This award funds a Workshop on Perception of Action, to be held May 18-20, 1997 in Brewster, MA. As computer vision moves from the processing of static images to consideration of image streams such as video sequences or real-time robotic vision, the problem of machine "understanding" of actions represented in the images is becoming increasingly important, for potential applications such as security and surveillance, dynamic situation monitoring, guidance and verification of machine action such as robotic assembly, and support for human user access to video image and multimedia databases. This workshop will explore the current state of knowledge in this area, and look into future prospects for advances in understanding, including schemes that represent action more naturally than the traditional sequences of static poses or key frames. The results and recommendations of the workshop will be published in the form of a report, which will also be made available on a web site.
