Once we have a name for it, that name can be put into additional programs. Attaching the correct signatures to overlapping three-dimensional objects is one of the biggest problems in perceptual robotics. The problem of an autonomous mobile robot navigating its way through three-dimensional surroundings is similar. The date of publishing was 1986 and I would say that at the present time it is possible to do this in all cases as long as enough programming time is invested in the project. The general problem is that of depth perception which occupies a lot of the time of psychologists as well as roboticists.
Humans use a number of cues from visual stimuli in order to arrive at depth perception.
To some extent these cues are deployed as a result of experience and learning and to some extent they are deployed immediately, and in a way, instinctively. Their accuracy is another matter. Human depth perception uses cues like overlay, relative size, convergence and several others. Imagine a cat standing in front of a human leg. The overlay of the cat tells us it is closer.