Shape Classes

The proposed method of shape understanding is based on the concept of shape classes that are understood as the basic perceptual categories. The Shape Understanding System (SUS) perceives the visual object by trying to fit it into one of the shape categories. Although shape is one of the most often perceived “properties” of the visual object, there is no satisfactory classification and definition of shape. An attempt to develop the system of shape classification that is based on the shape classes was made by Les [1]. Shape classes called shape categories (in the context of visual thinking) are used as the “material” of the visual thinking process. The shape classes are represented by the symbolic names and are defined in the context of visual understanding process. Each class is related to each other and based on relationships among classes there is relatively easy to establish the “perceptual similarity” of visual objects.