UNIVERSAL VISUAL CORRESPONDENCE IMAGING SYSTEM AND METHOD

System and method for detecting a target object within an environment, including obtaining a two-dimensional input image of a scene within the environment; generating, using a machine learning based feature generation model, a feature map of respective feature vectors for the input image; comparing the feature vectors included in the feature map with reference feature vectors generated by the feature generation model based on reference points within a reference image, wherein the reference image includes an reference object instance that corresponds to the target object; based on the comparing, identifying points of interest in the input image that correspond to the reference points; and determining a presence of the target object in the environment based on the comparing.