Patent Document ID: 4736437
Application ID: 07052140
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A pattern recognition method for rapidly determining the location and orientation between a reference area and a search area comprising the steps of: generating a series of clocked digitized video pulses representative of a reference area, recording said series of clocked pulses representative of a reference area in a plurality of separate addressable memory locations, generating a series of clocked digital pulses representative of a search area, recording said series of clocked pulses representative of a search area in a plurality of separate addressable memory locations, electronically addressing each scan line of said stored reference area in memory at any selected coarse scan angle, correlating said stored pulses received from said search area with each of said stored reference pulses derived from addressing the reference area to obtain an accumulation count for each coarse scan angle selected, repeating said scan for a plurality of coarse scan angles to obtain a coarse scan angle having an accumulation count greater than a threshold count, selectively addressing each scan line of said stored reference area in memory at fine discrete search angles about the coarse scan angle having an accumulation count greater than a threshold count, accumulating a separate count for each of a plurality of different fine discrete scan angles about said coarse scan angle having an accumulation count greater than said threshold count in separate addressable memory locations aassociated with each selected fine discrete scan angle position, statistically determining from the separate counts for fine discrete scan angles the precise angular alignment of the search area and the coordinates of the search area.