OBJECT RECOGNITION METHOD, OBJECT RECOGNITION APPARATUS, AND AUTONOMOUS MOBILE ROBOT

To carry out satisfactory object recognition in a short time. An object recognition method in accordance with an exemplary aspect of the present invention is an object recognition method for recognizing a target object by using a preliminarily-created object model. The object recognition method generates a range image of an observed scene, detects interest points from the range image, extracts first features, the first features being features of an area containing the interest points, carries out a matching process between the first features and second features, the second features being features of an area in the range image of the object model, calculates a transformation matrix based on a result of the matching process, the transformation matrix being for projecting the second features on a coordinate system of the observed scene, and recognizes the target object with respect to the object model based on the transformation matr