Early Journey into Artificial Intelligence
My journey into artificial intelligence began in early 1980, while I was working in the Civil Engineering Department at City University. At the time, I was collaborating with the late Professor Charles Bedwell on underwater measurement systems.
During this period, a PhD student from the Department of Electronic Engineering approached me for assistance with his doctoral research on extracting range information from digital stereo images. I was immediately intrigued by the project, as only a few months earlier, I had learned about artificial intelligence and the pioneering work initiated at Dartmouth College. I felt that this research naturally aligned with emerging ideas in AI and intelligent perception.
Our collaboration resulted in several publications. The initial findings were published in Optics and Lasers in Engineering:
- Lindsey, N. E., Babaei-Mahani, R., and Shah, Y. (1985). Development of a Stereo-TV System for Recording and Measurement.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0143816685900193 - Shah, Y., Chapman, R., Babaei-Mahani, R., and Lindsey, N. E. (1985). Extraction of Range Information from Stereo Images.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0143816685900211
A more comprehensive paper was later published in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI) in 1989, which was, and remains, one of the leading journals in artificial intelligence and computer vision:
Shah, Y., Chapman, R., and Babaei-Mahani, R. (1989). A New Technique to Extract Range Information from Stereo Images.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/34.192472
Exploring AI Applications (2016–Present)
In 2016, I began exploring the application of artificial intelligence in mental health. This line of inquiry was motivated by a personal experience involving a close relative living with severe autism. Concurrently, I undertook several courses at the Open University to formally deepen my understanding of autism and related conditions.
In 2024, I was introduced to Dr Sadegh Jalalian at Brunel University, who had recently completed his PhD on the application of artificial intelligence. He kindly provided several tutorials, which substantially supported the development of this and subsequent case studies. He is also a co-investigator on the project.
In addition to this work, I am currently pursuing another project focused on the application of AI in archaeology.
Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in these projects or in collaborating on other AI application initiatives.