The Role of Symmetry in Human and Computer Vision

Sven Dickinson, University of Toronto, Canada,
Abstract: Symmetry is one of the most ubiquitous regularities in our natural world. For almost 100 years, human vision researchers have studied how the human vision system has evolved to exploit this powerful regularity as a basis for grouping image features. While computer vision is a much younger discipline, the trajectory is similar, with symmetry playing a major role in both perceptual grouping and object representation. After briefly reviewing some of the milestones in symmetry-based perceptual grouping and object representation/recognition in both human and computer vision, I will review our efforts that draw on computer vision to understand the role that symmetry plays in human scene perception. Conversely, I will also look at how these results in human scene perception can strengthen the performance of modern deep learning computer vision systems for scene perception.