Engineers at the University of California, Santa Cruz have developed a new approach to a fundamental problem in computer vision: how to program a computer to recognize or categorize what it “sees” in an image or video.

The software analyzes the map of pixel relationships and determines the salient geometric features of the object or action. These components remain perceptually constant within an object regardless of image quality.

Their software could change the way people search the Web for photos and videos, and it may have applications in many other areas, such as video surveillance and security systems.