Patent Document ID: 9626776
Application ID: 14136864
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A computerized method of determining posture information of an object in a height map comprising a plurality of pixels captured by a range sensor system, the method comprising: receiving, at a slice generation module in a computing device, the height map of the object captured by the range sensor system; providing, by the slice generation module, a plurality of line segments over the height map, wherein each line segment has a plurality of slots; determining, by the slice generation module, a plurality of visibility slices, wherein each visibility slice is associated with one of the line segments and comprises a plurality of visibility values, where each visibility value indicates a proportion of missing height values amongst pixels underlying one of the plurality of slots of the associated line segment; extracting, by the slice generation module, a plurality of one-dimensional slices from the height map, wherein extracting the plurality of one-dimensional slices comprises determining an appropriate height map value for each of the plurality of slots in the line segment based on a subset of the plurality of pixels contained within each of the plurality of slots with non-missing height values; extracting, by the slice generation module, a location record indicating locations of the plurality of one-dimensional slices within the height map; identifying, by a posture information generation module in the computing device, a location of at least one point of interest in the height map by analyzing the plurality of extracted one-dimensional slices, the location record, and the plurality of visibility slices; and determining, by the posture information generation module, the posture information of the object based on the location of the at least one point of interest in the height map.