New Computer Program Recognizes Sketches Better Than Humans

First Posted: Jul 22, 2015 11:07 AM EDT

A new computer program may be better at recognizing sketches than you. Scientists have created a program, called Net, that's capable of correctly identifying the subject of sketches 74.9 percent of the time as opposed to humans, which only are correct 73.1 percent of the time.

Sketches are intuitive to humans, and have been used as a communication tool for thousands of years. However, recognizing free-hand sketches can be difficult since they're abstract, varied, and consist of black and white lines rather than colored pixels like a photo.

In this latest study, the researchers created Sketch-a-Net, which is a deep neural network; this computer program was designed to emulate the processing of a human brain. It's particularly successful because it accommodates the unique characteristics of sketches, particularly the order the strokes were drawn.

"It's exciting that our computer program can solve the task even better than humans can," said Timothy Hospedales, co-author of the new study, in a news release. "Sketches are an interesting area to study because they have been used since prehistoric times for communication and now, with the increase in use of touchscreens, they are becoming a much more common communication tool again. This could really have a huge impact for areas such as police forensics, touchscreen use and image retrieval, and ultimately will help us get to the bottom of visual understanding."

The findings could be huge for touchscreens, which could help understand what you are drawing and allow you to retrieve a specific image. This improvement could also help police forensics when an artist's impression of a criminal needs to be matched to a mugshot or CCTV database.