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Technology

Searching by Shape... 148

Posted by CmdrTaco from the it-looks-kinda-like-this dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Tired to type keywords in a general search engine to retrieve an image? A solution is in view. A specialized search engine developed by engineers at Purdue University allows users to draw a sketch of a part or to select one from a database. The system then returns parts having similar shapes. They call it shape searching. They think that companies having huge databases containing existing parts, such as in the automotive or the airline industries, will be able to save millions of dollars annually by saving up to 80 percent of the time necessary to search information on parts. This overview contains more details and an illustration of the searching process."
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Searching by Shape... More

Searching by Shape...

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  • pr0n? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Trumpetgod2k1 ( 740425 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @11:44AM (#8761628) Journal
    It's so easy to just type 'pr0n', but that can get you things you may or may not want. Draw what you're after, and no one will misunderstand.

    • Re:pr0n? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      if u can draw it, then why would you be searching for it?... wait... not everyone is into skectches are they...
    • Pr0n? No, no. You must type "bell +end" or "axe +wound" you silly man.
    • But if I draw what I want, the matches that come up will all, no doubt, be mis-shapen!
  • ya know, I want something 32-24-28

  • ..it begs to ask.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by xxdinkxx ( 560434 )
    how will it search for abstract things, like a love, hate, etc.. we have words for those things, but how do you draw them? Also.. it begs to be asked.. how will it handle regular expressions?
    • Uhm, if you read the blurb: "They think that companies having huge databases containing existing parts, such as in the automotive or the airline industries, will be able to save millions of dollars annually by saving up to 80 percent of the time necessary to search information on parts."

      Its not intended for abstract concepts, but for someone who knows basically what they're looking for and doesn't have a product number or anything to identify the part via text.
    • Yeah, I'd like to draw something like "the ever-widening, ubiquitous melancholy feeling in mind and in the universe", since google won't find it with the normal method. Would taking classes in "abstract art" help me with this?
    • I beg you to read the article. Employees don't use abstract concepts like love when they need to find the CAD drawing of a part.

  • We know what's gunna happen (Score:4, Funny)

    by PtM2300 ( 546277 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @11:48AM (#8761652)
    The most frequently drawn shape will be something similar to (.)(.)

  • Video Google (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Similar to Andrew Zisserman's Video Google (http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~az/talks/sicily.html) That will index a film, and you can search for images within the film. What's really clever is it will find objects where that image is occluded - for examle, it'll return all the shots of a van with a particular logo on, even if the logo isn't in view.

  • GIFT (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mkro ( 644055 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @11:48AM (#8761654)
    Sounds like GIFT [gnu.org] - The GNU Image-Finding Tool.

    • Re:GIFT (Score:3, Informative)

      by AxelBoldt ( 1490 )
      Yeah, or like imgSeek [sourceforge.net]. Although those two programs deal with 2-D images, not with 3-D parts.
    • Great. In a few years now, GIFT will become popular and people will be saying how it's a rip-off of Purdue's software, completely forgetting the real history...

  • Finally! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Google for the illiterate!

  • One Word (Score:2, Funny)

    by nonewshere ( 693344 )
    Pictionary!!!!

  • As badly as I draw,... (Score:4, Funny)

    by kclittle ( 625128 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @11:51AM (#8761674)
    especially using a mouse, I'd try to draw a flap actuator and end up getting p0rn by accident...

    • .. for all I know a "flap actuator" might *actually be* a device used in pr0n.

      It certainly sounds like one...

      • .. for all I know a "flap actuator" might *actually be* a device used in pr0n.

        No, silly! A flap actuator is a short, cylindrical tube that greatly expands and contracts in length when hydraulic pressure is applied or released.

        oh... uhhhh... never mind...

    • Re:As badly as I draw,... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by surprise_audit ( 575743 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:05PM (#8761744)
      Have to wonder why they'd be starting with a mouse interface when webcams are so cheap these days... I don't suppose it will be long before either your cpu case or your monitor will have one built-in.

      If the part can be hand-carried, simply hold it up to the camera, get several shots from different angles, then search for edges to outline. Check with the user that the outlines are mostly correct, and go search.

      If the part is too fricken heavy or awkward to handle, phone cameras and watch cameras are available. Is there a PDA+camera yet, with bluetooh/wireless for connection back to a desktop??

      Oooh! Oooh! I could patent that!!

      • What mouse??? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Knacklappen ( 526643 ) <knacklappen@gmx.net> on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:36PM (#8761905) Journal
        Have to wonder why they'd be starting with a mouse interface when webcams are so cheap these days

        Please, allow me to scream RTFA!!

        Several people in here talk about how poorly one can sketch with a mouse. What mouse??? We are talking about Solid Modeling, folks! 3D, ya know?!
        In that context, "sketching" means drawing up some 3D parts with very rough dimesnions by either using solid primitives or protruding/extruding profiles.
        And most probably we are talking about users who sit in an office environment, far away from actual parts or physical prototypes (in case they even exist yet).
        Please, read the article completely before posting comments!
        • Also, Graphires are dead cheap. The software price will put the cost of the hardware to shame. Though this particular system seems to be, as you say, based on 3-D approximations, there's no reason you couldn't use an interface similar to that in Magic Pengel, The Quest for Color. [gamespy.com]

          Draw a shape with a tablet, have it automatically converted to reasonably similar 3-D primitives, use this as the basis for the search. No problem. The sytem doesn't seem to work this way now, but it could.

          As for being unable to

          • As for being unable to draw at all, this is a system for design engineers. As I understand it, design engineers take mechanical drawing. Computers are great for final plans, but you still need drawing skills for the concept sketches, yes? No?

            The very first ideas might be sketched with pen and paper, but after that it's way easier to design it in CAD, raffining parts as the details are worked out. That way, you don't have to resketch completely a part because you need it in two different parts to be asse

      • The PDA you requested. [sonystyle.com] Since it's got the Wifi, I don't think you'll really miss the bluetooth. However, you can also get a Bluetooth memory stick for it, just in case.

  • How not to do the UI for this (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I came to think of, I did something vaguely similiar to this for my diploma thesis, but the user client was way worse than these guys': A matrix of 100x100 checkboxes in HTML, so you could clickety-click the shape you were searching for. Needless to say, it sucked immensely. :-)

  • Interesting, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Knacklappen ( 526643 ) <knacklappen@gmx.net> on Sunday April 04, 2004 @11:53AM (#8761684) Journal
    ...I guess the figure of 80% is over-estimated. Sure, today you can't have all the partnumbers in your head, but that's where your PDM system comes in: You categorize your assemblies/sub-assemblies/parts by chosing from a list of pre-defined designations. Later on, you search with exactly the same list and get your answers. Not pretty, but it works.
    Or you use your companies spare parts catalogue (which I do sometimes). Quite handy...
    Oh, and just for the record: I work for the world's second-biggest truck manufacturer for quite some years now, so I'm not exactly new to this business.

    Having said this, I must say that I naturally welcome every piece of research into this. So if the shape-searching guys really produce something useful, I think we will be one of the first to license this technology.

    • Re:Interesting, but... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by viniosity ( 592905 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @11:59AM (#8761710) Homepage Journal
      I have to agree. My company has over 250,000 SKUs and many are very similar in shape and size but are assigned different part numbers. In some cases the reasons for this might be minor and unimportant but the majority of times it's something very substantial like material composition.

      It would have limited functionality in my case.

  • used to have a "search for visually similar" option, which would return images with a similar arangement of colours. It was great. where did it go?

  • Not so easy? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by h4rdc0d3 ( 724980 )
    Has anyone ever tried to draw anything on a computer using a mouse? Even simple shapes can sometimes be difficult. I don't see how this could be any faster than typing in a few search terms. Certainly not enough to save "up to 80 percent of the time necessary to search information".
    • Good point but a simple Graphics tablet would more or less solve this problem, and they are getting increasingly cheaper. Wacom Graphire tablets for instance are very user friendly and inexpensive. The onle niggle is getting used to looking at a screen while drawing, but they have really expensive LCD screen tablets for that.

      So I could imagine this searching tool will be immediately accessible and handy to any graphic designers and photoshop junkies who already own graphics tablets, and it may just encou

    • Re:Not so easy? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Prodigy Savant ( 543565 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:36PM (#8761909) Homepage Journal
      Did u RTFA?
      You dont draw with your mouse to search. You select from a bunch of pics for something that matches what you are looking for. The system keeps narrowing your search down to fewer and fewer parts till you are satisfied with a result.
      • Thank you, Sir or Lady!
        Finally someone with a clue, in here. As you and I already pointed out [slashdot.org], we are talking 3D sketching here or selecting from a database. This has nothing to do with drawing funny lines in MS Paint (or GIMP for that matter).
  • the sketches have to be 2-d for matching.
    what if I sketch from a different point of view from the piece and the way that it is cataloged, they show a golf club looking head, fine.. what if I want a part that looks like a "insert object here", and I draw it from front/left, and the image on file is angled differently....
    • Well I assume they measure similarity invariant of affine transforms
    • the sketches have to be 2-d for matching.
      Think 3D. In Solid Modelling, "sketching" means creating a 3D volume with rough dimensions by either combining volume primitives (spheres, cylinders, cones, blocks etc) or by combining extruded profiles. Have you read the article? They talk about boxes they create around 3D features, so it's quite obvious that the sketch is in 3D, too.
      • Shouldn't waste your time writing to people who can't read :).

        Talking about search: maybe scientists are conducting a search for extra terrestial intelligence because there's a severe shortage of terrestial intelligence.

      • and these 3d images are extrapolated from a 2d drawing, done from a certain perspective.
        an engineer may make a 2d drawing of a 3d object from a different angle, (which end is up on a rectangular housing) and therefore the same elements can't be pulled from the sketch for comparison.
        now, if the parts are ALL entered as 3'd imagery, the angle should not matter, but this is using flat image files already in place at the establishment, not rentry of 3'd scans.
        • Dude, don't believe in the AutoDesk propaganda. (Yes, for a design engineer, bashing AutoCAD is like bashing QBasic (or even better: GWBasic) for a professional programmer)

          In the *real* world, we model in 3D and derive the 2D drawings automatically. Which means it's exactly the other way around: First you do the 3D, then the systems does the 2D view for you, then you add your dimension and annotations to make it a useful drawing to manufacture after. Nowadays, the model is the driving part, and the drawing
  • for mass audience but could be useful for some obscure academic research.

    Though it would be fascinating to know what current human study (psychology etc) says... How do we unterstand that a cat is a cat? (from a picture)

  • Tired of searching? Try surfing. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by titaniam ( 635291 ) * <slashdot@drpa.us> on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:00PM (#8761720) Homepage Journal
    Tired of searching and only finding what you were looking for? Try my new creation - the world's best Surf Engine [iconsurf.com], where you surf the web using website icons. When you just want to explore, I believe this is the best and most fun way to do it. I'd appreciate any feedback, as the site is only 1 week old.
    • It might have worked... then you linked it on slashdot. ;)
    • Cool site! I've tried it out, and liked it.

      Here are some further ideas:
      • I've found no way of adding my own site to it. How about a little form to do that?
      • I think having Icons with 16x16 pixels size as a standard view would also make it a bit neater, as no pixel artifacts occur and it's the standard size in my browser
      • Loading time would speed up extremely if you hosted the pics at your server and turned on http keepalive (or whatever it's called). The pics are not really big in size that this would kill y
      • Thanks for the advice. I started working on the submission form yesterday - it will be available in a day or two as I need to work on some details. I think I will keep the icons at 32 pixels, since 16 is a bit too small for the eyes (but as a visitor you can specify 16 already as an option). Also, many icons do come in 32 bit size and benefit from being larger. As far as serving icons from my site, I believe that is impossible legally. All of these icons are presumably copyrighted, so the most I can do
    • Tired of searching and only finding what you were looking for? Try my new creation - the world's best Surf Engine, where you surf the web using website icons.

      I clicked on an icon of a happy face, and got pottery instead. I guess the webmaster is happy doing pottery. Go figure.

  • General purpose image searching? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bobthemuse ( 574400 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:00PM (#8761721)
    What happens when a company [google.com] integrates this software with a huge source [slashdot.org] of photos taken in the real world. Add OCR and color matching to the picture, could be very interesting....

    • Re:General purpose image searching? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      google integrating images adding OCR you ask,
      what's happening is catalogue [google.com] 'd :-)

      Saving trees, time, thumbs, clutter & space everywhere.

      Magazines, journals, texts, documents ...
      your Safari future awaits.

  • To type keywords in a general search engine to retrieve an image?
    It's as if they're not even trying anymore. I mean, it's almost getting to the point where I don't understand what is being said.
  • I for one thought search was going to be stalled for quite some time. I think this is quite an important development. I'd have to see it a bit more but to be able to say "start with a MU-368-whatever"..."now take off that fin"..."add a flange around X to Y"...etc...to be able to query like this should be useful in any number of contexts...very cool...
  • 1. Crazy idea about searching on shapes.

    2. They think that companies having huge databases containing existing parts, such as in the automotive or the airline industries, will be able to save millions of dollars annually by saving up to 80 percent of the time necessary to search information on parts.

    3. Profit ???

    I could see some applications for this, but I don't know how well something like this could actually perform. Will companies bite?

    Actually all joking aside, I believe the results of their rese
  • Education theory used to look at mathematical and language skills only as indicators of intelligence. Then it was demonstrated that people can process information in a variety of ways - even things like *bodily kinesthetic intelligence* - people who learn with their bodies, like athletes or dancers.
    It seems the real challenge in terms of what the article is mentioning is having a database collected that someone could choose from. For a company that has a list of parts this seems quite useful.
    A image recogn
  • They probably use wavelets (an extended sort of Fourier Transform). Images (or sound or ..) are represented in a hierarchical wavelet-structure that allows you to query it very rapidly for certain shapes or colors.

    If you crawl the web and compute the wavelet-transformations of all the pictures you encounter, you have a very fast image query at your disposal.

    Wavelets are also used by the FBI for instantly veryfying the identity of a person encountered on the road by sending the wavelet-transform of his f

  • didn't altavista have something like this a long time ago? after you completed an image search, there was a button that said "show me more images like this" - and i seem to remember that "like" meant visually alike rather than keyword alike - i always wanted them to extend it so your initial search could start with a url to an existing image somewhere.

  • Nothing new.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TruenoSuave ( 675729 )
    There is nothing ground-breaking about this
    technology, Convera has had a commercial product (ImageFinder) since the early 90's doing exactly
    this... as have 10s of other companies and researchers:

    Database of content based image retrival systems [univ-nantes.fr]
  • "We take a 3-D model of a part and convert it into a bunch of small cubes called voxels, which stands for volume elements," Ramani said.

    Doesn't voxel stand for "volume pixel" or "volumetric pixel"?
  • Their workers might need to take some kind of art class then. Not all of us can draw...
  • A specialized search engine developed by engineers at Purdue University allows users to draw a sketch of a part or to select one from a database. The system then returns parts having similar shapes. They call it shape searching.

    Enough with the fancy marketing buzzwords and hype phrases already!! When will people, who invent new technology, just pick a name that describes the technology?? ... oh, wait...

  • What we all need to know (Score:3, Funny)

    by flossie ( 135232 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:11PM (#8761778) Homepage
    are they going to combine this search technology with geographical IP look-up so that we can all find our nearest Natalie Portman look-alikes?

  • Old news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by digitalhermit ( 113459 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:11PM (#8761779) Homepage
    Shoot, I remember seeing shape based searches in high school over a decade ago:

    Body type (check one):
    () Kate Moss
    () Barbie Doll
    () Olive Oyl
    () Petite
    () Athletic Slim
    () Athletic Trim
    () Average
    () Athletic Muscular
    () Zaftig
    () Body Builder
    .
    .
    .
    () Jabba the Hut
    () Portraits, courtesy US Space Agency

    (sorry)

  • Useful for finding replacement parts? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mrAgreeable ( 47829 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:12PM (#8761780)
    If I understand correctly, this requires a 3d model of the object in question to be processed by the system. Assuming the system is clever enough to compensate for orientation of the part and scale and such, which I assume it will be, it will only be useful for new databases. And even then assumes that someone will have taken the time to scan or model all the parts in 3d.

    It seems like with a new database, people would be more careful about cataloging things in the first place, and matching by shape wouldn't be necessary. I don't think I want an airline to buy parts by asking a computer to find something that seems to more-or-less look the same. (Same materials? manufacturing method? MTBF? It is the part solid or hollow?) That sort of recognition is something that I would hope would be a last resort.

    With older databases, there's no standard whatsoever for pictures of parts. Sometimes you get isometric exploded views of a whole system, sometimes individual parts in outline, or from an angle, photos, etc. This system doesn't claim to match those up at all, so I don't see how it could help you find that obscure part for your '72 BMW. (Unless your local Advance Auto has a 3d CAD operator standing by...)

    The example from the article, where engineers can look for a pre-existing similar part to what they want save manufacturing money seems like the only really practical use. So the airplane manufacturers might get some use, but (please!) not the airlines themselves.
    • I don't think it'd be a last resort as much as a starting point. I'd imagine an engineer trying to find someone more of a particular widget via this tool would go like this. Do a quick model, use the search tool to find matches. Browse through the matches individually, pick the ones that look the most similar. Call up someone responsible for each of those good matches, and find out all the detailed specs, eliminate ones that won't work. If none of them work, at least you've tracked down some people who have
  • The project is a interest idea. But do not see a real
    world practicallty. The examples mentioned in the article are useful for publishing research papers.

    But I do not see a human sitting and drawing pictures
    to find things realiably.

  • Gibson's "Pattern Recognition" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mlas ( 165698 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:15PM (#8761792) Homepage
    A search engine with these capabilities was prominently featured in William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition". A mysterious video disseminated over the Web contained a strange pattern that those trying to decode it thought was a street map. They fed it into a shape-matching engine and it turned out to be a fragment of shrapnel from a mine, which was a clue as to the origin of the video footage.

  • Extendable to CR? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stopmotioncleaverman ( 628352 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:18PM (#8761810)
    If this system can be used to parse images and find things which are visually similar to a small error level, could this be extended to form an accurate character recognition system? Is there any reason why it couldn't match up letters, typefaces in the same way? CR being such a difficult field to break through intelligently (as evidenced by the fact that so many sign-up pages now ask you to type in the characters you can see to prove you're not a script), would it be such a leap from this system to a proper CR system?

  • What's the point...? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by igrp ( 732252 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:19PM (#8761817)
    Maybe I am missing the point here but I don't really see how this is supposed to be an improvement.

    Most adults are used to typing (it's part of their jobs) and are quite familiar with a search engine's interface. So even if they're confronted with an unknown application, a new search engine or a weird GUI they can usually figure out what to do. You take all that away by introducing a draw-a-sketch interface, hence reducing productivity.

    And places that rely on having to search through a huge inventory of similar looking parts, like auto repair shops, either already have a system in place that uses hyperlinking or a deep-database, or use forms to enter part numbers to narrow down the selection to a few parts which can then be graphically displayed.

    Volkswagen, for instance, does the latter. Car dealers can enter the VIN or the model and year into their forms and it displays a clickable, exploded view of the car, including all the various options. The program is also linked into their inventory and ordering system. Works pretty well, from what I hear.

    Maybe this would work well for illiterate people though.

    • I think this is a case where one would use the right tool for the job. While google may be good for 99% of all searches, searching by shape may work for the few things that are hard to find on google.
    • You know what it looks like but you don't know what it's called.

      Searching for that doohickey [google.com] or thingamajig [google.com] is not going to get you the result that you want.

    • The point is in manufacturing. For example, you are a big metalworking company. You are extruding, think play-doh machine, pieces of metal, say aluminum Apache helocopter blades. In order to make the part, you need a header, a die, and a backer. The die is the exact shape of the thing you are extruding. The header and the backer don't need to be exactly the same shape, but just close. Now, it costs about $15,000 to build a custom design and manufacutre a backer. Now say you can seach all of your previously
  • With this technology, it certainly should be harder to stumble on pictures of the goatse guy or tubgirl.

    Although, I suppose that depends on how good of an artist you are, especially if you need pictures of caves or waterfalls.

  • IBM has had this technolgy for several years (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    IBM's QBIC image search technology has been around since 2001 or ealier and is being used on the Hermitage [hermitagemuseum.org] website. Users can select color combinations and/or draw a simple picture and the tool will locate matches from their digital collection. wwwqbic.almaden.ibm.com [ibm.com]

  • Does anyone else remember the ads about 10 years ago in Dr. Dobbs? IBM was claiming DB2 could do fuzzy image searching. The ad had a picture of a green wine bottle and a hand-drawn sketch of one of a similar shape.

    • I was a DB2 beta tester in a previous life. The product that you're referring to is the DB2 Image Extender [ibm.com], and I was fortunate enough to be able to try it out as part of their beta program. Seemed to be really cool tech, but of course IBM was in OS/2 marketing mode...meaning that they couldn't find a customer for it, even if it promised to end world hunger, find a cure for cancer/AIDS, or clean up our polluted ecosystem.

      I'm not sure about the current incarnation, but at the time there was a demo that incl

      • Hey, thanks for filling me in on that "I wonder what ever happened to . . .". IBM seems to have misplaced more cool tech than most other companies have produced at all.

        I remember Pournelle [jerrypournelle.com] writing in Byte about that time that he complained to the IBM booth at Comdex that they wanted hundreds of dollars for a device driver kit for OS/2, whereas if he went to the Microsoft booth they would be stuffing diskettes in his bag for nothing.

  • Even if this product fails to catch on in the airline industry, they can always turn to the rapidly growing market of "Porn Blockers", "Family Internet Filters" & "Parental Controls" - One of the existing problems is to detect & filter porn images accurately. The current naive algorithms simply sample image for huge swaths of pink & then discard the image. So an innocent pink puppy is as likely to be filtered as a naughty Hooter girl's pink hooters. "Shape-searching" can augment the algorithm by

  • Princeton (Score:3, Informative)

    by rgoer ( 521471 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @01:17PM (#8762110)
    Princeton's CS school has used a search-by-shape applet to search a library of 3D models for years... they showed it off at siggraph a while ago. Check it out here [princeton.edu].
  • Try imgSeek [sourceforge.net]: imgSeek is a photo collection manager and viewer with content-based search and many other features. The query is expressed either as a rough sketch painted by the user or as another image you supply (or an image in your collection). The searching algorithm makes use of multiresolution wavelet decomposition of the query and database images.
  • They call it shape searching.

    They were in a meeting for hours deciding that... you should have seen the names they rejected.

  • Why not by sound? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Axynter ( 684016 )
    Searching by shape is a bit of a nutty idea, if you ask me... words can describe shapes quite well. What I'd really like to see though is a search engine for music, that lets the user sing/whistle and searches based on that. There are songs that I'd really like to hear again but I don't remember the name nor the lyrics.
    • Searching by shape is a bit of a nutty idea, if you ask me... words can describe shapes quite well.

      Yeah right, try to describe these. [purdue.edu]

      I can see you sitting in front of your computer and typing into 3D-Google "L-shaped thing with small hollow cylinder on one side and two small holes on the other with a funny angle to it, looking like the alien gun in last weeks X-files, but without the pyramid on top" ... and then you press "I'm lucky".
  • Ancient Chinese secret:

    Chinese Character Dictionary [chinalanguage.com]

    Think of similar method using Purdue-like description. Hopfully they are not copy-cats.

  • Slashdot covered [slashdot.org] the 3d search by Princeton [princeton.edu] almost two years ago. I didn't find the article too informative so I can't tell for sure if it's the same type of thing or not.

  • Audio? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @02:06PM (#8762390) Homepage Journal
    This app runs against images, 2D data. How about 1D, audio? Find themes, motifs, tones/tibmres, maybe even musicians by identity. Find songs that have them in common, or samples, or "quotes" of riffs or arrangements. Find common quotes in speeches, news reports, marketing hype, and map their coordination in our mediasphere.Track buzzwords in public speech, including samples in parks, sidewalks, football games. Compare politicians' denials to their campaign speeches. Find the most popular TV dialog structures, and fill in the blanks, turning out a generation of Hollywood writers onto the streets, in favor of their PCs. WORD! Heard?
  • For the first time ascii images of the goatse guy are finally on topic!
  • seems like i saw a blue's clues with that. "come on, shape searchers! let's find the first clue."
  • A few years ago walking around Boston I started seeing this strange symbol on some buildings (graffiti).

    There were no words associated with it, or antyhing. I thought it was either: A) Extremely intelligent statement on societies inability to learn anything about something that cannot accurately be represented and researched in text. or B) Just a random symbol.

    I still haven't found out what it meant, but a tool like this would have been very useful.
  • IBM has had "QBIC", Query By Image Content, for some time now. From what I read, this allows the user to specify some overall image-processing attributes of desired images, and hopefully the database will find images that meet the description. However, this applies to the domain of flat images, and not 3D shapes. Still, it's informative to know that this concept is not new, and has been around since at least 1996 or so.

    http://wwwqbic.almaden.ibm.com/ [ibm.com]
    http://www.seyboldreports.com/SRDP/0dp9/D0901006.H [seyboldreports.com]
  • the implications for this with AI are even bigger - the thing is that if you can search by shape - then you need a system with a camera that can "see" shapes - then get information about them in its database.

    think the targetting system on robocop.

    additionally you can use it in forensic scene analysis - scan a photo into this and have it analyze all the shapes and data....

    then you can later seach for sites or scenes by description.... and reverse.

    I, for one, welcome the Skynet overlord enabling step in s

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