Articulated object recognition, or: how to generalize the generalized Hough transform

A method for model-based recognition of articulated objects in cluttered scenes is presented. The objects consist of rigid parts connected by rotary or prismatic joints. The method is based on an extension of the generalized Hough transform approach. It is applicable to various viewing transformations. Unlike previous methods there is no significant degradation in performance for recognition of articulated objects compared with the recognition of rigid objects containing similar amounts of information. The method was implemented and successfully tested for recognition of partially overlapping 2-D objects with rotary joints which have undergone rotation, translation, and scaling.< >