Heuristic Inference in Sensory Perception with an Application to Computer Vision

In 1948, when Norbert Wiener published his path breaking work Cybernetics: Communication and Control in the Animal and the Machine, computer technology was in its infancy. Most computers that were needed to implement his ideas were of analog type, certainly in animals but also in machines. They were barely enough for executing simple algorithms, for example for extrapolating stationary time series or for control of servo mechanism. One can only speculate what Wiener’s genius would have accomplished with todays computing machinery with their speeds in the Giga and Tera Hz ranges.