Aspect graphs for visual recognition of three-dimensional objects.

Visual representation of three-dimensional (3-D) objects in our environment is a crucial question, for human as well as for machine vision. Some basics are reviewed of a viewer-centred model of 3-D objects, aspect graphs, which represents a 3-D object by all its topologically stable visible image contours (its aspects) and by the transitions between stable image contours (the visual events). This representation takes only geometrical information about discontinuities in depth and in surface orientation into account, and other clues, such as shadows, markings, texture, etc, are disregarded. Mathematical results give some insight into the relationships between the geometry of a 3-D object and the aspect of its image contours, the techniques used to compute an aspect graph effectively, and the state of the art of this type of model in computer vision. Current research is reviewed on viewer-centred representation in cognitive science that seems to indicate that aspect graphs could also have some relevance for human vision.