Novelty detection

Imagine you have a toy chest full of all kinds of toys you love to play with. You know all of the toys in the chest because you've played with them before. One day, your friend brings over a toy you've never seen before. You don't know what it is or how to play with it. This new toy is a "novelty."

Novelty detection is when a computer is trying to find something new that it has never seen before. Just like you were trying to figure out how to play with your friend's new toy, the computer is trying to figure out what to do with this new thing that it hasn't seen before.

But, how does the computer know if something is new or not? It looks at patterns in the things it has seen before and tries to figure out if this new thing fits into those patterns. If it doesn't fit into any of the patterns, the computer knows it's a "novelty" and it will try to figure out what to do with it.

Just like you might have to explore your friend's new toy to figure out how to play with it, the computer has to explore the new thing to figure out what it is and what to do with it. But, when it figures it out, it can use that knowledge the next time it sees something similar.