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Google Outlines AI-Based Number Reading For Street View Photos

Posted by timothy on from the may-not-combine-with-remote-detonation dept.

mikejuk writes "A recent Google research paper outlines how it might use AI to read digits in natural images — specifically Street View photos. The idea is to automatically extract the number of each house as captured by Street View and then use this to improve the geocoding data returned by Google. When you next ask for directions to a particular address the new data could be used to show you a street view looking directly at the house you specified."

14 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. what happens when it reads 0 / 0? by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 5, Funny

    does it crash?

    1. Re:what happens when it reads 0 / 0? by Ksevio · · Score: 4, Funny

      Might run into problems when it drives by my house at number:
      42'); DROP TABLE street_numbers; --

  2. US Census TIGER/Line shape files? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've poked around the US Census data which has geographical coordinates of pretty much everything you can imagine - streets, natural landmarks, including addresses.

    How does most mapping software get its dataset? Why does Google need to find street numbers from the photos? (Probably because a public dataset like this isn't available globally) I imagine that Census data is a free alternative but professional geolocation data requires big fees.

    http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/

    1. Re:US Census TIGER/Line shape files? by djl4570 · · Score: 2

      An underlying reason for this is to better correlate the map with the objects placed on the map. Accurately place the Pita Place on the map between the Jamba Juice and the Charbucks instead of putting it on the other side of the parking lot where there isn't a building.

  3. Captcha just failed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If it can read a digit in a pattern then capchta just became useless as a way of keeping bots out of a website

    1. Re:Captcha just failed by djl4570 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Then we'll have to migrate to "Cutest kitten"

    2. Re:Captcha just failed by jdpars · · Score: 2

      Except that house numbers are generally made to be readable at a distance, whereas captchas are made to be readable up close, with scrutiny.

    3. Re:Captcha just failed by Baloroth · · Score: 2

      You should look up how the captcha system works (or reCAPTCHA, anyways). It is digitally scanned old print (such as old editions of the New York Times). They feed it through several OCR systems, and the ones that it doesn't work on get thrown into the CAPTCHA system for humans to identify. This allows them to a) digitize massive amounts of old print material (using the humans interpretation of words that can't be read by computer) and b) ensure large sources of CAPTCHAs which are unreadable by present OCR systems. Material that can be read by the new OCR system simply won't end up as captchas.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    4. Re:Captcha just failed by justforgetme · · Score: 2

      you are unfamiliar with the tech underlying recatpcha

      why do you think it requests two words?
      one word it has classified one it hasn't.
      If you input the classified word correctly you pass. The input of the unclassified word is buffered.
      Unclassified words that get consistent results are added to the classified word pool and used as validators.

      It is a basic ml application whose computing is outsourced to the humans on the Internet who want to post
      on canHazMcRib.org and a very elegant solution as well. if you want more info on Luis von Ahn's ventures
      start with his ted talk.

      --
      -- no sig today
  4. Google is Skynet by itsybitsy · · Score: 2

    It's clear now.

  5. Street number reading by Animats · · Score: 2

    I've been wondering when they'd make that work.

    In retail areas, street numbers tend not to be too prominent. It may be necessary to read business signs and use that data to disambiguate addresses. This would help to clean up the phony-business problem in Google Places. An alternative is to use real estate records, as the USC Geocoder does for some areas, to get a solid lock on address vs. physical position. But that data is only available for some areas. There are also the Census Bureau's TIGER/LINE files, but they're US only and not complete for the entire US.

    Outside the US, this is likely to be more useful. If you have a few street numbers and a few business signs per block, you can infer the rest reasonably accurately.

  6. I have an idea.... by salva84 · · Score: 4, Funny

    http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2011/11/8ca4aa827c1151851324895f5ffb778b.jpg

  7. Last lesson of ml_class.org by doudou42 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's interesting to note that one of the co author is also the teacher for stanford free classe on Machine Learning and that the last lesson of the course was on this topic...

  8. Sponsored by the US drone program by Mister+Liberty · · Score: 3, Funny

    n/t