Researchers Develop 3-D Search Engine

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers have developed new search engines that can mine catalogs of three-dimensional objects, like airplane parts or architectural features. All the users have to do is sketch what they're thinking of, and the search engines can produce comparable objects."

Comments

Is this a good thing to be releasing?

[LostCluster]

How long until we hear about an "architectural piracy" case over the design of small-city houses...

Depends too much on

[Anonymous Coward]

the user's ability to sketch. I used to teach an amature art class, most people can't even draw a recognizable hand.

Re:Depends too much on

[Anonymous Coward]

the user's ability to sketch. I used to teach an amature art class, most people can't even draw a recognizable hand.

What a coincidence. I used to teach a Spelling for Amateurs class, and most people couldn't even spell the name of the class.

Dupe

[Zagar]

Didn't we have a similar article about 3D searching a week ago?

Finally...

[Unnngh!]

...I can have the computer search for my keys for me.

Oh, wait

Yay

[f0d0]

A 3D haystack!

Maybe something for ./?

[__aagctu1952]

If Slashdot started comparing the general shape of submitted articles maybe we would avoid a couple of dupes...

How long before

[jeffkjo1]

How long before the porn industry capitalizes on this one?

The possibilities are endless.

pr0n

[JohnGrahamCumming]

And they developed this for searching for "industrial objects". Riiighht.

Seriously though the pr0n industry is an extreme early adopter of most technologies, I'm sure that the researchers could fund research for the rest o their lives by creating an adult search engine.

John.

Re:pr0n

[theM_xl]

Are you capable of drawing any female pornstar so that she looks different enough from the others that the search engine can find her? More important, would you actually CARE if it came up wrong? :D

Re:pr0n

[wwest4]

> And they developed this for searching for
> "industrial objects". Riiighht.

I'll take the sinister uses with the good on this one. This is really exciting for engineers and tinkerers alike, because it means less time reinventing the proverbial wheel.

Let's say I need gizmoX but it's not manufactured anymore. Fuck! No knock-offs, either. The local CNC shop says they can make it for me but they need a model. 3D modeling could take a while unless you have something similar to start with.

So instead of PORING over an industrial parts catalog and missing the one close-enough part you needed but didn't expect to find under "444_T91_fillets" or whatever, you just search for matches using dimensions, materials, etc. Just a few minor tweaks to the mesh, export, send to the shop, and you just saved a lot of time.

That said - the design and manufacturing industries have been writing ad hoc programs for searching for parts and tooling since the proliferation of computers, but it's nice to see that a general-purpose algorithm that could be more or less universally applicable is evolving from the efforts thus far.

accuracy..

[zeruch]

...will be the most critical part. i could easily see people doodling in the dark trying to get an object they desire, but are not sure how to visually detail out.

Previous /. article

[jwbing]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/04/142321 0&tid=

Shit...

[AstrumPreliator]

My drawing skills are something to be desired. I'm not exactly sure how they can compensate for poor artists...

Any neural net people here?

[Thinkit4]

I've been curious if there has been a hyperelegant neural network solution that can do everything from recognize handwriting to faces. Completely different applications would only require retraining. So you wouldn't hear about specific applications like this, but one breakthrough that can simply, elegantly be applied anytime recognition must be performed. Are there any real (not patent or such) related reasons this doesn't exist?

Re:Any neural net people here?

[nacturation]

I've been curious if there has been a hyperelegant neural network solution that can do everything from recognize handwriting to faces. [...] Are there any real (not patent or such) related reasons this doesn't exist?

Aside from the fact that about a third of the brain (if I remember correctly) is dedicated to visual processing and that the brain has a hundred billion neurons, each neuron firing at up to 1KHz and with thousands of connections to other neurons? :)

It's an enourmously complex task to be able to do this reliably. Recognizing a straight-on photograph and matching it up with a corresponding mugshot is a whole lot different than seeing the side of a person's half-shadowed face from slightly behind them and recognizing that as the same Alice who held up the convenience store on Tuesday.

Handwriting recognition is orders of magnitude easier to do, since it's a lot easier to recognize similarities between a sample of writing and previously analyzed samples. In fact, there's a lot of research into this already. Facial recognition is slowly getting there, but people are still stumbling over the same mistakes that were made decades ago -- attempting to formalize facial recognition by defining a set of rules and matching to those rules. Much like spam filtering, this works to a degree until the differences between the one you want and the one you don't no longer fits within the rules.

Neural net + genetic algorithms/programming to refine the net's connections and behavior is probably a good approach. Finding a means of populating, storing, and computing hundreds of billions of nodes in the network is the real challenge I think. Of course, take everything I've said with a huge grain of salt as this is a subject I'm fascinated by but have little practical experience with.

I'm not too good at sketching,

[darkonc]

but I can give you her measurements....

Clippy for the drawing impared

[Craptastic Weasel]

Ahhh I can see it now. The marketing types will have a field day with this one. Maybe they could incorporate Clippy into the program, to help out the drawing impared.

"I see you are trying to draw a monkey wearing what looks like a condom on it's head... May I assist you in finding such an item?"

"Click'

"Find books about Monkeys With Condoms on their Heads at Amazon.com"

"Find the lowest priced Monkey with Condoms on their heads with Price Grabber"

Bring it.

Beta Results

[Anonymous Coward]

The researchers have released the most popular sketch submitted by beta testers who were asked to sketch what they're thinking of:

+---------+
| |
| (.Y.) |
| ) ( |
| ( Y ) |
| |
+---------+

3D Search Engine Screenshots

[CHaN_316]

Larger screenshots of the 3D search engine can be found here and here.