From Visual Homing to Object Recognition

Randal C. Nelson
Department of Computer Science
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627

Abstract: Navigation is a group of fundamental behaviors by which an agent, biological or mechanical, guides itself through the world on the basis of sensory information. Such fundamental behaviors are interesting, because in the behavioral pardigm for intelligence, they form the foundation upon which more sophisticated abilities are developed. This chapter begins by describing, analyzing, and demonstrating an associative-memory based method for homing and for navigating along a prescribed path on the basis of visual landmarks. We then show how the basic associative mechanisms used to implement the simple navigation behavior can be modified to form the basis for a general method for 3-dimensional object recognition. An implementation of such a system is described, and its performance on a database of 3-dimensional objects illustrated.