Machine vision-based method and system for locating objects within a scene containing the objects

A machine vision-based method of locating an object within a scene, the method comprising:

• uniformly illuminating, a target surface of the object within the scene with light having an intensity within a narrow range of wavelengths such that the light overwhelms an intensity of ambient light within the narrow range to obtain reflected, backscattered illumination;
• sensing brightness of the target surface due to a diffuse component of the backscattered illumination to obtain brightness information;
• inspecting the backscattered illumination from the target surface to obtain geometric information;
• computing rotation invariant and position invariant surface albedo of the object based on the brightness information and the geometric information;
• and
• processing the surface albedo with a matching algorithm to match to a model using surface geometry or the surface albedo in order to obtain a location of both a model and the object within the scene.