Picture recognition apparatus and method

Claim 1

A picture recognition apparatus, comprising: an object modeling execution part for estimating variations in appearance of an object caused by variations in a capturing environment and modeling the object; an object model registering part for previously registering the object model obtained in the object modeling execution part in a database; a picture information input part for inputting picture information of an object to be a recognition target; a similarity determining part for matching the input picture information with the object model previously registered in the object model registering part, and determining a similarity with respect to the registered object model; and an object recognizing part for outputting a type of the object to be a recognition target determined to be most similar among the registered object model, wherein, in the object modeling execution part, information of a plurality of pictures captured by changing a relative position and posture of the object with respect to the fixed picture information input part is input, and variations in appearance of the object caused by possible variations in a capturing environment are estimated to be modeled based on the input information of a plurality of pictures, wherein, in the picture information input part, a characteristic small region in the object to be a recognition target is selected from a picture, and the object to be a recognition target is modeled based on information included in the selected small region and arrangement information of the small region, and wherein the modeling in the picture information input part is performed by identifying a partial space in which a vector having a pixel value of the small region as an element is varied, and separating the partial space into a partial space corresponding to geometric variations and a partial space corresponding to photometrical variations, and identifying each of the partial spaces successively using sample data.