Automatic Interpretation and the Mapping Community 
  
At the commencement of this address, it was pointed out that a 
comprehensive report on photo interpretation automation should consider 
interpretive tasks associated with all disciplines or technologies within 
the broad field of photogrammetry. Consequently, two other developments 
that have matured during the past four years must be discussed. One is 
the development of trainable logic techniques for automatic pass-point 
selection and the other is the development of the Stereo Image Alternator. 
The techniques for automatic pass-point selection i^? were developed 
at Bendix Research Laboratories under contract to the U. S. Air Force, 
Rome Air Development Center. Previous to this, automatic equipment had 
been developed for locating and transferring points from one photo to 
another by means of electronic image correlation, but no comparable means 
existed for automatic selection of points that would be within the capabilities 
of the correlation techniques. In fact, the human quite often could not 
pick useful pass-points since the human interpreter effectively over- 
interpreted by either focusing his attention on a single point, mentally com- 
pensating for differences in perspective due to sharp relief, or ignoring 
or compensating for differences in image appearance due to daily or seasonal 
changes, all of which were beyond the capabilities of the correlation techniques 
practiced subsequent to pass-point selection. It was apparent, therefore, 
that any developed technique for the selection of optimum imagery to be used 
for automatic transfer should include an analysis of the correlation properties 
of the imagery. Subsequently, this was accomplished. The resulting techniques 
employ trainable, adaptive logic to evaluate pass-point quality on the basis 
(12) "Automatic Pass-Poipnt Selection", R. M. Centner, C. W. Matherly, The 
Bendix Corporation, Smithfield, Michigan, Photogrammetric Engineering, 
Vol. 32. No. 5, September 1966. 
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