Patent ID: 11861870
Assignee: THE BOEING COMPANY
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  B | IPC B  G

Claim 13:
14. A method comprising:
receiving points of an image that are spatially arranged to represent objects depicted in the image, the points corresponding to pixels of a digital image, or data points of a point cloud;
performing a greedy nearest-neighbor (GNN) cluster analysis of the image to group the points of the image, the GNN cluster analysis including:
grouping the points into a plurality of local GNN clusters, from a greedy analysis of the points using a k-d tree in which the points are organized in a k-dimensional space; and
extending the plurality of local GNN clusters into a plurality of global GNN clusters, and including for a pair of local GNN clusters, applying the pair to nested conditions by which similarity of the local GNN clusters is evaluated according to defined similarity criteria, and the local GNN clusters are merged into a global GNN cluster when each of the defined similarity criteria is evaluated to true, and passed as global GNN clusters when any of the defined similarity criteria is evaluated to false; and

detecting the objects depicted in the image based on the global GNN clusters; and
wherein extending the plurality of local GNN clusters includes:
merging pairs of the local GNN clusters when each of the defined similarity criteria is evaluated true, and thereby producing a set of merged pairs of local GNN clusters; and
iterating through the set of merged pairs to further merge any intersecting pair of the merged pairs into a respective global GNN cluster.