Patent ID: 7995055

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of classifying image data, the method comprising: receiving, at a computing system, a plurality of data points corresponding to three-dimensional image data, and using the computing system for: mapping the plurality of data points to a local coordinate frame, the local coordinate frame defining a plane; identifying a ground plane in a scene represented by the plurality of data points by: determining candidate ground plane data points from the plurality of data points; fitting a plane to the candidate ground plane data points; defining a sub-set of the candidate ground plane data points, each candidate ground plane data point of the sub-set being greater than a first threshold distance away from the plane; projecting the candidate ground plane data points of the sub-set onto the plane to provide projected data points; calculating a distance between each of the projected data points; eliminating projected data points from the candidate ground plane data points when the distance between the projected data points is less than a second threshold distance; and iteratively fitting, defining, projecting, calculating, and eliminating until convergence, wherein the plane is identified as the ground plane upon convergence; creating from the plurality of data points a first subset of data points that are above the ground plane; identifying a second subset of data points associated with an object in the scene, from the first subset of data points; identifying a plurality of features associated with the second subset of data points and determining a signature for the identified plurality of features; and classifying the second set of data points according to a correspondence between the signature and a reference signature.