Patent ID: 7831087

Claim:
A method for visual-based recognition of an object, said method comprising: receiving digital depth data for at least a pixel of an image of an object, which is not required to be inside of a subject, said depth data comprising information relating to a distance from a visual sensor to a portion of said object shown at said pixel, said visual sensor comprising an emitter and sensor of light, wherein said light is selected from the group of electromagnetic radiation consisting of visible light, infrared light, and ultraviolet light and wherein said receiving of said depth data does not require special behavior from one of said object and said subject; generating a two dimensional plan-view image based in part on said depth data, wherein said generating includes generating said plan-view image as if said object was viewed at an axis normal to ground level from above and wherein generating other view images based on different orientations of said object other than at said axis normal to ground level from above is not required; extracting a plan-view template from said plan-view image, wherein at least a portion of said plan-view image is transformed; and processing said plan-view template at a classifier, that is executing on a computer system, to assign a class to said plan-view template, wherein said classifier is trained to make a decision according to pre-configured parameters determined at least in part based on said class of said plan-view template.