Machine perception is the capability of a computer system to interpret

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpret ...

in a manner that is similar to the way

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...

s use their

sense A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world through the detection of stimuli. (For example, in the human body, the brain which is part of the central nervous system rec ...

s to relate to the world around them. The basic method that the computers take in and respond to their

environment Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, all living and non-living things occurring naturally * Biophysical environment, the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or ...

is through the attached hardware. Until recently input was limited to a keyboard, or a mouse, but advances in technology, both in hardware and

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

, have allowed computers to take in

sensory Sensory may refer to: Biology * Sensory ecology, how organisms obtain information about their environment * Sensory neuron, nerve cell responsible for transmitting information about external stimuli * Sensory perception, the process of acquiri ...

input in a way similar to humans. Machine

perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system, ...

allows the computer to use this sensory input, as well as conventional

computational Computation is any type of arithmetic or non-arithmetic calculation that follows a well-defined model (e.g., an algorithm). Mechanical or electronic devices (or, historically, people) that perform computations are known as '' computers''. An esp ...

means of gathering

information Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random, ...

, to gather information with greater accuracy and to present it in a way that is more comfortable for the user. These include

computer vision Computer vision is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate t ...

, machine hearing, machine touch, and machine smelling, as artificial scents are, at a

chemical compound A chemical compound is a chemical substance composed of many identical molecules (or molecular entities) containing atoms from more than one chemical element held together by chemical bonds. A molecule consisting of atoms of only one ele ...

molecular A molecule is a group of two or more atoms held together by attractive forces known as chemical bonds; depending on context, the term may or may not include ions which satisfy this criterion. In quantum physics, organic chemistry, and bioch ...

atom Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. Every solid, liquid, gas ...

ic level, indiscernible and identical. The end goal of machine perception is to give machines the ability to see, feel and perceive the world as humans do and therefore for them to be able to

explain An explanation is a set of statements usually constructed to describe a set of facts which clarifies the causes, context, and consequences of those facts. It may establish rules or laws, and may clarify the existing rules or laws in relati ...

in a human way why they are making their decisions, to warn us when it is failing and more importantly, the reason why it is failing. This purpose is very similar to the proposed purposes for

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

generally, except that machine perception would only grant machines limited

sentience Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations. The word was first coined by philosophers in the 1630s for the concept of an ability to feel, derived from Latin '' sentientem'' (a feeling), to distinguish it from the ability to ...

, rather than bestow upon machines full

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

self-awareness In philosophy of self, self-awareness is the experience of one's own personality or individuality. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. While consciousness is being aware of one's environment and body and life ...

, and

intentionality ''Intentionality'' is the power of minds to be about something: to represent or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs. Intentionality is primarily ascribed to mental states, like perceptions, beliefs or desires, which is why it ha ...

Machine vision

Computer vision Computer vision is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate t ...

is a field that includes methods for acquiring, processing, analyzing, and understanding images and high-dimensional data from the real world to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions. Computer vision has many applications already in use today such as

facial recognition Facial recognition or face recognition may refer to: * Face detection, often a step done before facial recognition * Face perception, the process by which the human brain understands and interprets the face * Pareidolia, which involves, in part, se ...

, geographical modeling, and even aesthetic judgment. However, machines still struggle to interpret visual impute accurately if said impute is blurry, and if the viewpoint at which stimulus are viewed varies often. Computers also struggle to determine the proper nature of some stimulus if overlapped by or seamlessly touching another stimulus. This refers to The Principle of Good Continuation. Machines also struggle to perceive and record stimulus functioning according to the Apparent Movement principle which

Gestalt psychologists Gestalt-psychology, gestaltism, or configurationism is a school of psychology that emerged in the early twentieth century in Austria and Germany as a theory of perception that was a rejection of basic principles of Wilhelm Wundt's and Edward ...

researched.

Machine hearing

Machine hearing, also known as machine listening or computer audition, is the ability of a computer or machine to take in and process sound data such as speech or music. This area has a wide range of application including music recording and compression, speech synthesis, and

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the ma ...

. Moreover, this technology allows the machine to replicate the human brain's ability to selectively focus on a specific sound against many other competing sounds and background noise. This particular ability is called "

auditory scene analysis In perception and psychophysics, auditory scene analysis (ASA) is a proposed model for the basis of auditory perception. This is understood as the process by which the human auditory system organizes sound into perceptually meaningful elements. T ...

". The technology enables the machine to segment several streams occurring at the same time. Many commonly used devices such as a smartphones, voice translators, and cars make use of some form of machine hearing. Present technology still occasionally struggles with

speech segmentation Speech segmentation is the process of identifying the boundaries between words, syllables, or phonemes in spoken natural languages. The term applies both to the mental processes used by humans, and to artificial processes of natural language proces ...

though. This means hearing words within sentences, especially when human accents are accounted for.

Machine touch

Machine touch is an area of machine perception where tactile information is processed by a machine or computer. Applications include

tactile perception In physiology, the somatosensory system is the network of neural structures in the brain and body that produce the perception of touch (haptic perception), as well as temperature (thermoception), body position (proprioception), and pain. It is ...

of surface properties and

dexterity Fine motor skill (or dexterity) is the coordination of small muscles in movement with the eyes, hands and fingers. The complex levels of manual dexterity that humans exhibit can be related to the nervous system. Fine motor skills aid in the grow ...

whereby tactile information can enable intelligent reflexes and interaction with the environment. (This could possibly be done through measuring when and where friction occurs, and of what nature and intensity the friction is). Machines however still do not have any way of measuring some physical human experiences we consider ordinary, including physical pain. For example, scientists have yet to invent a mechanical substitute for the

Nociceptor A nociceptor ("pain receptor" from Latin ''nocere'' 'to harm or hurt') is a sensory neuron that responds to damaging or potentially damaging stimuli by sending "possible threat" signals to the spinal cord and the brain. The brain creates the sens ...

s in the body and brain that are responsible for noticing and measuring physical human discomfort and suffering.

Machine olfaction

Scientists are developing computers known as

machine olfaction Machine olfaction is the automated simulation of the sense of smell. An emerging application in modern engineering, it involves the use of robots or other automated systems to analyze air-borne chemicals. Such an apparatus is often called an ele ...

which can recognize and measure smells as well. Airborne

chemicals A chemical substance is a form of matter having constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Some references add that chemical substance cannot be separated into its constituent elements by physical separation methods, i.e., wit ...

are sensed and classified with a device sometimes known as an

electronic nose An electronic nose is an electronic sensing device intended to detect odors or flavors. The expression "electronic sensing" refers to the capability of reproducing human senses using sensor arrays and pattern recognition systems. Since 1982, rese ...

Machine taste

Future

Other than those listed above, some of the future hurdles that the science of machine perception still has to overcome include, but are not limited to: -

Embodied cognition Embodied cognition is the theory that many features of cognition, whether human or otherwise, are shaped by aspects of an organism's entire body. Sensory and motor systems are seen as fundamentally integrated with cognitive processing. The cogni ...

- The theory that cognition is a full body experience, and therefore can only exist, and therefore be measure and analyzed, in fullness if all required human abilities and processes are working together through a mutually aware and su