Limager: the perception regime

Running the Reality Kernel to ask, of a scene, what is out there.

P.I.G.M.I.E. Filing 1 · patent pending

The perception regime

The Limager is the perception regime of the Reality Kernel. A perception regime is an operating mode whose objective is to estimate what is present in a scene. A scene is the physical configuration being observed.

The Limager uses the same emitter-detector loop as the other regimes. The emitter sends probes into the scene. The detector records the physical responses. From these responses, the Limager estimates structure, including 3D geometry, material properties, and semantic labels.

Adaptive probing

The Limager does not capture a static image. It performs adaptive probing. Adaptive probing means that later probes depend on earlier observations.

Training the optimisation

The original experiments trained the Limager from labels. By default, and as first implemented, the Limager was bootstrapped by spraying projections across the whole scene and reconstructing the illuminated volume, in the manner of a primitive neural radiance field. That early reconstruction was cruder than a full neural radiance field, but it gave the optimisation a starting model of the scene to refine.

From there, the Limager's labels and outputs were trained against one of two kinds of target. The target could be inferred, by applying another method to the same scene, such as a reconstructed 3D model, a neural radiance field, or a depth map. Or it could be known, such as ground-truth classifier labels.

Gen II (under exploration). Where enough Reality Kernels operate simultaneously, the optimisation can instead be trained by reinforcement learning against reality, for example against identity classifiers. The filings also describe, as a non-limiting objective, selecting probes to maximise information gain about the scene, written I(S;Y), the mutual information between scene variables and the recorded output.

In every case, the label source and estimator in use are recorded in the protocol digest, so a perception run states how it was trained.

Across the reactor spectrum

The Limager works across the full range of reactor configurations. A reactor is the optional physical medium between the emitted probes and the detected responses. With a linear or identity reactor, the Limager is simply an active sensor. Forgery resistance is not the objective at that operating point.

The same convolution-bundle format, meters, and protocol logging still apply. A convolution bundle is the joint, time-ordered record of what was emitted and what was observed. This makes a perception run fully auditable and allows one instrument to support the perception, verification, and rendering regimes.

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