View-Invariant Object Recognition with Visibility Maps

In this paper we propose a new framework for view-invariant 3D object recognition, based on what we call Visibility Maps. A Visibility Map (VM) encodes a compact model of an arbitrary 3D object for which a set of images taken from different views is available. Representative local invariant features extracted from each image are selectively combined to form a visibility basis, in terms of which an arbitrary view of the modeled object can be represented. A metric which incorporates geometric information is also provided for comparing test images to the model, and can be used for recognition.