David Vernon (born 8 March 1958 in Ireland) is an Irish researcher specializing in artificial intelligence, cognitive robotics, and computer vision, known for work on cognitive systems framework and enactive cognition.^[3,2] He is a research professor at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bremen, and has also been affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University Africa and the National University of Ireland Maynooth.^[3,2] He serves as the Coordinator of the European Network for the Advancement of Artificial Cognitive Systems and is a member of the management team of the RobotCub integrated working on the development of an open-source cognitive humanoid robot.^[3,2,4] Vernon previously worked in a range of institutions in Ireland and elsewhere, has published books on computer vision and more than 80 research papers, and maintains the website www.vernon.eu.

Vernon has held positions at Westinghouse Electric, Trinity College Dublin, the European Commission, the National University of Ireland Maynooth, Science Foundation Ireland, Etisalat University College, and the University of Skövde.^[5] During his tenure as Head of School of Computer Science in the National University of Ireland Maynooth, he was responsible for introducing the first stand-alone Computer Science degree programme to that university.^[6] Before moving to Bremen, Vernon was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Kigali, Rwanda, focusing on Masters programs by research in Computing fields.^[1]

His research interests include Fourier-based computer vision and enactive approaches to cognition.^[7] Vernon has authored two and edited three books on computer vision and has published over eighty papers in the fields of computer vision, robotics and cognitive systems.

Vernon's objective is to provide a framework to design cognitive systems by elaborating a comprehensive and structured overview of the entire research area concerned with cognitive systems, referring to it as a pre-paradigmatic discipline.^[8] He differentiates two global approaches: the cognitivist and the emergent. While the cognitivist approach has its origins in cybernetics (1943–1953) and is based on logical calculus immanent in nervous activity, the emergent approach originates from the study of self-organized systems (1958), focuses on embodiment, and can be refined into three subcategories: Connectionist, Dynamical, and Enactive. While engaged in assessing these four paradigms, he also advocates the Enactive Systems Model to offer the framework through which successively richer orders of cognitive capability can be achieved, enabling the system to become part of an existing world of meaning (ontogeny) or shape a new one (phylogeny).

Published works include Machine Vision - Automated Visual Inspection and Robot Vision, published by Prentice Hall Europe in 1991 (ISBN 978-0-13-543380-5). In 2001, Springer published Fourier Vision - Segmentation and Velocity Measurement Using the Fourier Transform (ISBN 978-0-7923-7413-8). Other publications include A short Course on Cognitive Systems (version 2.0) from the University of Genoa, Italy. In 2014, MIT Press published Artificial Cognitive Systems: A Primer (ISBN 978-0-26-202838-7).