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

Claim 7:
8. An apparatus comprising:
a memory configured to store computer-readable program code; and
processing circuitry configured to access the memory, and execute the computer-readable program code to cause the apparatus to at least:
receive 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;
perform a greedy nearest-neighbor (GNN) cluster analysis of the image to group the points of the image, the GNN cluster analysis including the apparatus caused to:
group 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
extend 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

detect the objects depicted in the image based on the global GNN clusters; and
wherein the nested conditions include a first condition by which circumscribing hyperspheres of the local GNN clusters of the pair are evaluated to determine if a distance between the circumscribing hyperspheres is less than or equal to a distance threshold;
wherein the nested conditions include a second condition by which a point in a first of the local GNN clusters that is closest to a centroid of a second of the local GNN clusters is evaluated to determine if the point is within a threshold distance of the centroid, and a third condition by which a minimum distance between the point in the first of the local GNN clusters and respective points in the second of the local GNN clusters is evaluated to determine if the minimum distance is less than the threshold distance.