A cubist approach to object recognition

We describe an appearance-based object recognition system using a keyed, multi-level contest representation reminiscent of certain aspects of cubist art. Specifically, we utilize distinctive intermediate-level features in this case automatically extracted 2-D boundary fragments, as keys, which are then verified within a local contest, and assembled within a loose global contest to evoke an overall percept. This system demonstrates good recognition of a variety of 3-D shapes, ranging from sports cars and fighter planes to snakes and lizards with full orthographic invariance. We report the results of large-scale tests, involving over 2000 separate test images, that evaluate performance with increasing number of items in the database, in the presence of clutter, background change, and occlusion, and also the results of some generic classification experiments where the system is tested on objects never previously seen or modeled. To our knowledge, the results we report are the best in the literature for full-sphere tests of general shapes with occlusion and clutter resistance.