pattern recognition: see optical sensing optical sensing, in general, any method by which information that occurs as variations in the intensity, or some other property, of light is translated into an electric signal. This is usually accomplished by the use of various photoelectric devices.
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pattern recognition

In computer science, the imposition of identity on input data, such as speech, images, or a stream of text, by the recognition and delineation of patterns it contains and their relationships. Stages in pattern recognition may involve measurement of the object to identify distinguishing attributes, extraction of features for the defining attributes, and comparison with known patterns to determine a match or mismatch. Pattern recognition has extensive application in astronomy, medicine, robotics, and remote sensing by satellites. See also speech recognition.

pattern recognition [′pad·ərn ‚rek·ig′nish·ən]

(computer science)

The automatic identification of figures, characters, shapes, forms, and patterns without active human participation in the decision process.

(artificial intelligence, data processing)

pattern recognition - A branch of artificial intelligence concerned with the classification or description of observations.

Pattern recognition aims to classify data (patterns) based on either a priori knowledge or on statistical information extracted from the patterns. The patterns to be classified are usually groups of measurements or observations, defining points in an appropriate multidimensional space.

A complete pattern recognition system consists of a sensor that gathers the observations to be classified or described; a feature extraction mechanism that computes numeric or symbolic information from the observations; and a classification or description scheme that does the actual job of classifying or describing observations, relying on the extracted features.

The classification or description scheme is usually based on the availability of a set of patterns that have already been classified or described. This set of patterns is termed the training set and the resulting learning strategy is characterised as supervised. Learning can also be unsupervised, in the sense that the system is not given an a priori labelling of patterns, instead it establishes the classes itself based on the statistical regularities of the patterns.

The classification or description scheme usually uses one of the following approaches: statistical (or decision theoretic), syntactic (or structural), or neural. Statistical pattern recognition is based on statistical characterisations of patterns, assuming that the patterns are generated by a probabilistic system. Structural pattern recognition is based on the structural interrelationships of features. Neural pattern recognition employs the neural computing paradigm that has emerged with neural networks.