Active object recognition integrating attention and viewpoint control

We present an active object recognition strategy which combines the use of an attention mechanism for focusing the search for a 3D object in a 2D image, with a viewpoint control strategy for disambiguating recovered object features. The attention mechanism consists of a probabilistic search through a hierarchy of predicted feature observations, taking objects into a set of regions classified according to the shapes of their bounding contours. We motivate the use of image regions as a focus-feature and compare their uncertainty in inferring objects with the uncertainty of more commonly used features such as lines or corners. If the features recovered during the attention phase do not provide a unique mapping to the 3D object being searched, the probabilistic feature hierarchy can be used to guide the camera to a new viewpoint from where the object can be disambiguated. The power of the underlying representation is its ability to unify these object recognition behaviors within a single framework. We present the approach in detail and evaluate its performance in the context of a project providing robotic aids for the disabled. (C) 1997 Academic Press.