Generic object recognition: building coarse 3D descriptions from line drawings

PARVO, a computer vision system that addresses the problems of fast and generic recognition of unexpected 3D objects from single 2D views, is introduced. Recently, RBC (recognition by components), a new human image understanding theory, has been proposed on the basis of the results of various psychological studies. However, no systematic computational evaluation of its many aspects has been reported yet. The object recognition system the authors have built is a first step toward this goal, since its design respects and makes explicit the main assumptions of the proposed theory. It analyzes single-view 2D line drawings of 3D objects typical of the ones used in human image understanding studies. The main issues related to generic object recognition are discussed, original algorithms and techniques specific to the author´s systems are described, and results of the different processing stages of the system are presented