Patent Document ID: 20020154819
Application ID: 09788852
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A method for matching spatial relationships between input feature points, the feature points representing locations in space and labels associated with the feature points, and template feature points stored in a memory based on a tessellation of the feature points comprising the steps of: a) searching for matches between a polyhedron in the tessellation of the input feature points and a polyhedron in the tessellation of the template feature points based on similarity of contents contained within the polyhedra, the contents being the angular values and labels associated with the feature points of the polyhedra; b) examining the matches by searching for further matches in appropriate adjacent polyhedra; and c) repeating step b) using the just matched adjacent polyhedra from step b), to search for further matches in appropriate adjacent polyhedra, if the matching criteria is not satisfied, the matching criteria between the input feature points and the template feature points being based on the number and similarity of the matches, further based on the number and similarity of the matches of appropriate adjacent polyhedra, and also based the resulting spatial transformations between the locations of the matching input feature points and template feature points.