7.6 Summary

In summary, this chapter introduces the applications of visual attention modelling in computer vision, satellite imagery, image retrieval and robotics. Object detection, recognition, image segmentation for object and non-object regions by aid of visual attention have been presented, first in both natural image and satellite imagery, then for content based image retrieval, and finally visual attention models have been applied in robot navigation and automatic environment map building. Some conventional methods in computer vision, which have been combined with visual attention models, are also briefly introduced in order to explain these applications clearly.

The applications introduced as case studies in this chapter – together with those to be presented in the next chapter – aim at inspiring more research and applications in these exciting, meaningful and rapidly evolving areas and beyond.