"What exactly is computer vision then? Computer vision is a research field working to equip computers with the ability to process and understand visual data, as sighted humans can. Human brains process the gigabytes of data passing through our eyes every second and translate that data into sight - that is, into discrete objects and entities we can recognise or understand. Similarly, computer vision aims to give computers the ability to understand what they are seeing, and act intelligently on that knowledge."
– Computer vision: Cheat Sheet. ZDNet.com (December 6, 2011), by Natasha Lomas.