Computers can now automatically crop photos to capture the most interesting part in an aesthetically pleasing manner, thanks to researchers at Penn State.
After Jianbo Ye graduates in the spring, he will begin working as a researcher at Amazon Lab126, the secretive research and development unit located in the Silicon Valley.
A new patent awarded to a Penn State team takes the next step in computer learning techniques in the hopes that computers can one day understand the complex realm of human feelings.
Jia Li, associate professor of statistics at Penn State, and James Z. Wang, professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State, have been awarded the United States patent titled "Real-Time Computerized Annotation of Pictures." Li and Wang developed a unique computer system called ALIPR (Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures in Real-Time) that can suggest, in real time, several words describing the content of any general-purpose photograph using the pixel information alone. The automatic image-tagging system uses novel methods in statistical learning and data mining to link pictorial characteristics with English words.
A pair of Penn State researchers has developed a statistical approach, called Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures in Real-Time (ALIPR), that one day could make it easier to search the Internet for photographs. The public can participate in improving ALIPR's accuracy by visiting a designated Web site, http://www.alipr.com, uploading photographs, and evaluating whether the keywords that ALIPR uses to describe the photographs are appropriate.
