Perceptual Organization Perceptual Organization is about finding salient or significant groupings, collections and labelings of image data that identify visual structure and events supporting later interpretation and reasoning processes. Our visual systems see the slash as a single object. A classic example is the Kanisza Triangle, in which we perceive a white triangular surface in front of black circles and a black triangle. See my paper on this. Kaniza Triangle Optimal contour and junction labeling of the Kaniza Triangle found by my program.
Arrows indicate direction of surface overlap.
I believe that this approach can be extended to transparency and motion. Check out my java transparency applet that explores the interpretation of surface lightness and transparency at X-junctions. Perceptual User Interfaces One of the applications for this work is the ZombieBoard Whiteboard Scanner. The user interface to ZombieBoard is a real-time computer vision system that monitors the board, watching for people to draw commands. An extension of this Diagrammatic User Interface incorporates glyph icons , which are coded symbols that can be magnetically affixed to the board and read by zooming in the camera.