In contrast to many machine vision systems, we human observers can readily recognize solid objects and visually discriminate their 3-D shapes even under changes in viewpoint and variations in object orientation and lighting. While the importance of binocular disparity has been known since the 1830's, the importance and perceptual informativeness of visual contours for object recognition and discrimination is not adequately appreciated. This article will review those scientific contributions that demonstrate that visual contours and their deformations over time (in response to object or observer motion) carry as much or more information about object shape than other forms of visual information.
Haptic object recognition based on shape relates to visual object recognition ability