Patent ID: 7231087

Claim:
A method for approximating a target object's pose from a range measurement device generated image of a target environment comprising the steps of: generating a range image of the target environment; extracting a binary map from the range image by filtering the range image to include silhouettes of objects located within a predetermined range of distances from the range measurement device; determining the location of a target object silhouette; iteratively applying stages of binary templates to each target object silhouette with each stage representing a range of possible poses of the target object; wherein each stage includes shape templates that represent a merger of all possible object silhouettes that result when the target object is rotated about all undetermined axes for a given stage of template application and mask templates that correspond to empty regions surrounding the target object when it is in a corresponding pose; and wherein each stage represents a higher spatial fidelity than the previous stage such that each stage reduces a number of possible poses of the target object; and approximating the target object's pose by computing a match score between the target object silhouette and the binary shape and mask templates and wherein poses represented by binary templates yielding relatively high scores are selected as the approximate target object pose.