Automating knowledge acquisition for aerial image interpretation

Abstract

The interpretation of aerial imagery requires substantial knowledge about the scene under consideration. Knowledge about the type of scene-airport, suburban housing development, urban city-aids in low-level and intermediate level image analysis and will drive high-level interpretation by constraining search for plausible consistent scene models. Collecting and representing large knowledge bases requires specialized tools. In this paper we describe the organization of a set of tools for interactive knowledge acquisition of scene primitives and spatial constraints for interpretation of aerial imagery. These tools include a user interface for interactive knowledge acquisition, an automated knowledge compiler that transforms schemabased assertions into productions that are directly executable by our interpretation system, and a performance analysis tool that generates a critique of the final interpretation. The generality of these tools is demonstrated by the generation of rules for a new task, suburban house scenes, and the analysis of a set of imagery by our interpretation system.