Object identification employing surface markings
Timothy J. Ellis, Thierry Dommes · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1994
The majority of vision-based recognition systems currently employ geometric methods for matching extracted image primitives with a three-dimensional representation of an object, e.g. a CAD model. Such systems typically assume that each object will be discernibly different, hence ensuring unique recognition. However, in many situations, the geometry of the objects may be identical (e.g. drinking mugs on a shelf, packets on a supermarket shelf), but a particular object may only be distinguished by the patterns or markings on its surface. Such surface markings may be described, for example, by simple vector-based graphical primitives (lines, curves, text) or a pixel-based image representation. These descriptions are considered to be `painted' onto the model object surface. This paper considers several algorithms that may be used to extract and match surface-based primitives to model objects stored in a database; how the different surface descriptions may be represented in a model-based system; and the integration of these into a system to match appropriate descriptions of surface markings in order to achieve recognition. Results of applying these algorithms to a set of exemplar images are presented.