Webcam Jigsaw Solver in 200 Lines of Python

leighklotz writes "Jeff Breidenbach and 200 lines of Python code have brought us the Glyphsaw Puzzle solver. Hold a puzzle piece up to a webcam, and the display sgiws exactly where in the puzzle the piece belongs. The solver uses the Python Imaging Library (PIL), Numerical Python, and the PARC DataGlyph Toolkit. By the way, you can make your own DataGlyphs."

Other applications?

[RM6f9]

Facial recognition? Or, was this a by-product of same?

Hmmm

[winstonmeister]

My Mom used to subscribe to some pretty kooky Religious Right publications (unfortunately, she quite possibly still does). I remember one of them was heavily pushing a Net-Nanny type program, and the advertisement claimed it could actually analyze the images and selectively block out sites where the images contained naughty bits but didn't have textual cues for other, competing pieces of software to pick up on. Of course, now that such things might actually be possible, they'll just block all the sites that have pictures of balloons. ;)

Jiglyph

[Doc Ruby]

A "jigsaw" is a nifty tool that dances around a pattern in a sheet of wood, a narrow saw band that cuts like a laser along curves (OK, compared to its 19th Century prececesors). A "jigsaw puzzle" is a puzzle made by jigsawing a picture, and putting it back together along its deceptively simple interlocking contours. This device substitutes an AI scanner for the saw, in inverse operation to the jigsaw. So, if anything, it's a "Jiglyph", not a "Glyphsaw" - unless they mean that it "saw" the "glyph".

Re:Anti-spam image checks?

[James_G]

Wow 200 lines? I bet it has tons of includes though

"The Glyphsaw Puzzle solver is implemented in less than 200 lines of Python code by making good use of the PARC DataGlyph Toolkit, the Python Imaging Library (PIL), and Numerical Python."

^ I bet you'd win that bet.

This uses Reed-Solomon coding for error correction

[hqm]

I made a C library of the Reed-Solomon error correction routines and published it as the rscode library on Sourceforge at http://rscode.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

I wrote a version of this library originally as a contractor for PARC when I was in grad school, to use as the error correction coding for their data glyphs. This is bsaically the same algorithm used for audio and CD-ROM data.

closed source, proprietary, and astroturf

[SuperBanana]

Yep, and it's not only closed source, it's proprietary; to develop for it, you need to buy the eval kit and license the technology.

Furthermore, not a single slashdot reader seems to have noticed that the article is one giant piece of astroturf. The submitter's website plainly lists his address in Palo Alto, which just happens to be the site of PARC, the Xerox research center that developed the technology. Coincidence? I seriously doubt it.

Oh, and this technology is mostly used in color copiers for printing out the machine's serial number in pure yellow so you can't see it..but the document can be traced back to you (this is supposedly for the Secret Service to chase down people making color copies of US currency and whatnot, but that's a bullshit excuse now that these copiers all have currency detectors and refuse to copy currency). They don't point it out specifically, but there are various hints dropped in the FAQ about it.

Re:Google knows all

[jc42]

No, it's not really scary. They just programmed knowledge of one of the most common typing errors: hitting a key adjacent to the one intended. Lots of spelling checkers do this. It merely shows that the google folks looked at the problem reasonably, used known techniques for guessing what was meant, and did a good job of programming it.