Computers: Computers that see: Solutions to this difficult challenge may reside in hardware rather than software, or a combination of both

Computer vision - the automated analysis of visual data - has long been one of the most intractable problems in automation and robotics. While simple types of vision devices, capable of recognizing isolated two-dimensional forms, are now being commercialized, more general vision tasks have remained out of reach. Most researchers in the field believe that the current predominant approach, which regards computer vision as primarily a software problem broadly similar to speech understanding, will eventually achieve useful vision capabilities. However, a growing minority feel that real automated vision will require not just better software, but also hardware that is radically different from present digital computers, hardware more capable of mimicking human vision.