Complex cells and Object Recognition

Abstract

Nearest-neighbor correlation-based similarity computation in the space of outputs of complex-type receptive fields can support robust recognition of 3D objects. Our experiments with four collections of objects resulted in mean recognition rates between 84% (for subordinate-level discrimination among 15 quadruped animal shapes) and 94% (for basic-level recognition of 20 everyday objects), over a 40deg X 40deg range of viewpoints, centered on a stored canonical view and related to it by rotations in depth (comparable figures were obtained for image-plane translations). This result has interesting implications for the design of a front end to an artificial object recognition system, and for the understanding of the faculty of object recognition in primate vision.