So sometime back I saw this video presentation of a new and, what I like to call it, novel method for extracting 3D structures from a single image. Part of the reason why this blows my mind, is that this approach is well defined for a specific scenario and it utilizes the best of both human brain and computer's processing power.
We have a great sense of depth perception of objects. Our brains are well trained to construct an object's three dimensional model, by just looking at pictures. This, however, is a trivial and a highly challenging task for computer algorithms. On the other hand, computers are capable of computing and interpolating data at a much faster rate than humans, given that the task is simple and fairly straightforward.