Pattern recognition and understanding for visual information media

Pattern recognition and understanding, PRU, is a fundamental technology to realize intelligent visual information media, which can select, summarize, and augment the visual information in the real world according to the need of each individual. A three years research project, "Pattern Recognition and Understanding for Visual Information Media (VIS-PRU)", sponsored by the MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan), has finished. The purpose of this project is to restructure the PRU technology, which has been developed for making automatic machines to replace humans, into a key technology in the multimedia fields where the information media are expected to support human activity and to augment the human ability. The critical difference between the two cases is that a human consumes the output of PRU in multimedia systems, while a machine consumes it in automated systems for substituting humans. The achievements of the research project are introduced and the PRU in real time, human centered systems are discussed.