Vision, Logic, and Language – Toward Analyzable Encompassing Systems

Some time ago, Computer Vision has passed the stage where it detected changes in image sequences, estimated Optical Flow, or began to track people and vehicles in videos. Currently, research in Computer Vision has expanded to extract descriptions of single

actions

or concatenations of actions from videos, sometimes even the description of agent

behavior

in the recorded scene.

This transition from treating mostly

quantitative, geometric

descriptions to becoming concerned with more

qualitative, conceptual

descriptions creates contacts between Computer Vision, Computational Linguistics, and Computational Logic. The latter two disciplines have studied the analysis and combination of conceptual constructs already for decades.

Based on selected examples, attention will be drawn to the potential which can be tapped if the emerging thematic overlap of research in these three disciplines is investigated collaboratively. This applies in particular to the development of encompassing systems which rely on methods from all three disciplines, for example by providing Natural Language interfaces to more generally applicable combinations of Knowledge Bases with Computer Vision systems.