Digital Image Processing - FA 2010

I took this course not with much idea of things done on images, but I am starting to be amused by the course and thoroughly enjoying it, given that it's offered by one of the best professors in my school.
Today's class on 'human vision' was a very good learning experience. Can you believe that our eye has been so carefully designed that emulating just the vision (leaving the higher level processing) has taken so much research? Adding senses to it for Ariifical Intelligence purposes has still a long way to go. Makes me feel who can be a better engineer than god. We have been trying to copy from his design and that's when we realize how much thought has gone into our existence, which we take for granted.

Here are list of little things your eye can do for you
1. The curvature of the lens is adjusted either to be curved to see nearby objects or made flat in order to see far objects.
2. The refractive index is denser than air in order to take in the photons from visible spectrum, instead of reflecting the useful information.
3. The pupil is like an aperture to shut when there is too much light and open when it's dark in order for you to see clearly.
4. The retina is the photosensitive receptor/sensor from where the gathered information is sent to the brain. There is a 5 degree tilt on optical axis to let the lines meet in order for us to focus and let the two lines meet. Fovea has denser collection of photoreceptors for acute vision.
5. The cornea which is the hard transparent layer of eye contributes to power. It also acts like a filter to protect harmful UV rays as they can damage the tissue beneath.

There is so much more than this that the eye does. One of the hardest things to emulate on robots was to catch objects, predicting the future trajectory of ball/object.
It amazes how easily you can identify exactly what you look for, analyze depth in the image.
I am also learning how our vision is relative and even tends to be fooled sometimes, but it is so perfect that 2/3 rd of our brain processes visual inputs and is so vital to our existence.