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3-D Search Engine for Shapes

geoffsmith writes "Just stumbled upon an amazing search engine from Princeton where you can search for shapes. What separates this from something like Google Image Search is the fact that you can actually draw out the shape you are looking for on a little sketchpad. The sketchpad allows you to draw front, side, and top views to provide the search engine with a 3-dimensional construct of the shape."

26 comments

  1. Damn by I+Am+The+Owl · · Score: 2, Funny

    I knew I should've paid more attention in my art class on human body studies!

    --

    --sdem
    1. Re:Damn by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 2
      That was my first thought too. Glad I'm not the only mammal.

      You have to wonder what would come up with an hourglass shape, or a pair of circles...

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
  2. are those crickets? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what the fuck? ONE comment? I would expect this on another post about the newest version of phoenix, but this is pretty interesting.

  3. Bleep boop bing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Only one comment??? COME ON PEOPLE this is interesting

  4. EDITORS!: There is something wrong with this story by geoffsmith · · Score: 2

    I just submitted this story, and it showed up as being posted at 4am. Which would explain why it only has 1 comment, it was posted 1 minute ago and yet it claims to be posted 14 hours ago.

    Anyone who is reading this, contact (Hemos?) and tell them something is wacky with their clock.

  5. Weird by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How did this get posted down at the bottom? This wasn't there a few minutes ago. Definitely a cool flexing of technological muscle though.

  6. No wonder there are no comments .... by Ninja+Programmer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The damn thing doesn't work. I am an artist of reasonable skill (see?) and so tried it out. I attempted the following:

    1. A hand with index finger extended.
    2. An upright pyramid.
    3. A cylinder.
    4. A sphere.
    5. A skull.

    I also put the obvious thing into the text field. It failed to find any match for any of these. The hand and skull, I understand. Missing the pyramid was disappointing, but not matching either the cylinder or sphere?!?! Forget it -- this thing is garbage.

    1. Re:No wonder there are no comments .... by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      I attempted the following: 1. A hand with index finger extended. 2. An upright pyramid.
      3. A cylinder. 4. A sphere. 5. A skull.....It failed to find any match for any of these.


      You must have done something wrong. I tried those shapes and got a big image of a skeleton drinking a beer on top of a pyramid while flipping off some soccer players :-)

  7. I knew this would be coming... by dan_linder · · Score: 1

    ...I am sure there are lots of pornographic websites trying to get this perfected also. Imagine the searches... :)

    1. Re:I knew this would be coming... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      unfortunatly, no matter how acurate you drawing/query would be, you'd still get back some goat as your result :)

  8. what happens if you draw a breast? by v8interceptor · · Score: 1

    hmmm... i might have to find out

    --
    --- Why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit? | Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?
    1. Re:what happens if you draw a breast? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I tried it, and got this:

      http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970915.html

  9. MPEG 7 supports shape and region searches by Walt+Dismal · · Score: 1

    I believe that MPEG 7 includes support for encoding of shapes and regions, and would support searches for items by characteristics. If true, that could make searching image databases really nice.

  10. There has been a plugin for Oracle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    for this available for some time (4 years or so). It's 2D, and you freehand a sketch, and the plugin searches an Oracle DB for a visual match. It was impressive in the demo.

  11. Time Travel! by Rui+del-Negro · · Score: 2

    Obviously this proves that time travel is possible! I've been making a few tests and I think I know how he did it. Expect a formal announcement in a press conference that I'll be giving last week.

    RMN
    ~~~

  12. I, Christopher Columbus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Claim this thirteenth post for Spain. Now all of you, get the fuck out!

    1. Re:I, Christopher Columbus by Destoo · · Score: 1

      Well, it just so happens La Pinta is the 13th shape I found in my first search!

      --
      Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
  13. Retroactive Daylight Savings Time by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 2


    You have to figure Slashdot has been running since 1994. If they moved servers from an area that observed Daylight savings time to one that did not they would have to adjust their clock to make up for all of the springing forward and falling back they missed out on. By my calculation this equates to roughly the 14hours your posting was in Limbo.
    </sarcasm>

    --
    "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
    --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
  14. I thought so too until I read the F'ing Article by einhverfr · · Score: 2

    I tried this too.

    It is not searching images, but rather 3d models.

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  15. Imagine the pr0n possibilities... by hackshack · · Score: 1
    Seriously, though, as a (budding) industrial designer, I've always wanted something like this. For example, Philippe Starck's "Prince AHA" stool/stand is pretty easy to draw, but rather hard to describe using words- "it's sort of a half-and-half stepped-pyramid, organic wineglass shape..."

    I can also imagine the possibilities for wildlife categorization. Say a naturalist had a PDA with this engine on it, as well as a database of plants and/or birds- no more second-guessing encyclopedias.

    Now they just have to have a music search engine where you can hum a few notes from a song, and the possibilities list gets smaller and smaller with each note.

  16. Well... by Corby911 · · Score: 1

    One of the authors (one Alex Halderman) says that it's (big surprise) not really ready for this kind of load, and that it therefore probably won't work well if at all for most people. Of course, since it appeared 1/2 way down the page, chances are it won't get too badly hammered.

    Anyway, my search for a cube seemed to work pretty well. A sphere seemed to get me a lot of human heads, but my circles were hardly perfect...

    --
    Monday is a horrible way to spend 1/7 of your life.
    1. Re:Well... by Corby911 · · Score: 1

      Apparently all's fine now - seems to be working perfectly for me.

      --
      Monday is a horrible way to spend 1/7 of your life.
  17. I can't find the pr0n! by Poppa_joe · · Score: 1

    There are no naked chicks in the data base of 3 dimensional shapes that Stanford has in its data base. I looked it up using every illustration and word combination that I could think of to no avail. There search engine works surprisingly well it's just that the library of shapes searched is limited. I can see this being a lot more impressive of the library of shapes was bigger.

  18. I know how this works !!! by Tensor · · Score: 2

    You draw the three views T,S,F and the engine returns .... whatever it feels like it.

    I drew a cylinder Circle, rect, rect, and got a locomotive engine (close), a tri-cycle (!!!), a couch (!!!), a bullet (close), a philipps radio (!!!)

    These were repeated several times over too.

    Looks like it still needs a bit more work

  19. Re:EDITORS!: There is something wrong with this st by Weird+Dave · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is pretty common on Slashdot. With slash, an editor can publish a story to appear with any arbitrary time for the article. If the time is in the future, the article won't appear for a while. If it is in the past, it will appear down the line in the submissions. Whenever it happens, people get mad.

    --

    Grumble, Grumble
  20. Last Post! by alpg · · Score: 1

    "We don't do a new version to fix bugs." - Bill Gates
    "The new version - it's not there to fix bugs." - Bill Gates
    -- Retranslated from Focus 43/1995, pp. 206-212

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...