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Shape recognition is an area of informatics known as artificial intelligence or AI. Artificial intelligence aims to emulate intelligent thought processes with computer technology. AI is further divided into strong and weak artificial intelligence.
Strong AI aims to duplicate human intelligence entirely, including consciousness and emotions. There hasn't really been much progress in this area. The imprecision of the objective (e.g. emotion) and the lack of practical use have kept strong AI mostly the domain of intellectual game play.
By contrast, weak AI enters more and more aspects of practical life. From computer guided weaponry to parking aids in motor vehicles - the objective here is to logically interpret certain parameters and to draw the appropriate conclusions from them. Automatic processes have a great advantage over human intelligence in this area. Automatic processes are generally error free, consistent, and they can interpret a lot of data simultaneously. A parking aid can observe all sides of a vehicle at the same time, while a human has to watch different sides in turn, which can easily lead to misjudgements.
Shape recognition has a lot of applications. Some examples are: OCR (optical character recognition), artificial reading programmes, the recognition of finger prints or human irises, the reading of bar codes, etc. The overwhelming advantage of AI over human intelligence in these fields ought to be clear. A computer can compare a human iris with millions of stored iris patterns in seconds - a task, which a human observer would take a long time to accomplish only with extremely well catalogued data.
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