US Patent 10540782 Image processing for pose estimation

A method for estimating a pose of a first object in relation to a second object, the second object comprising a visual marker comprising a plurality of ellipses comprises capturing a video image of the visual marker with an image capture device on the first object, then pre-processing frames of the video image on a graphics processing unit. The method comprises detecting the visual marker by finding contours in the frames to identify the plurality of ellipses and determining that a pattern of the plurality of ellipses match a known pattern of the visual marker. Then the method comprises obtaining coordinates of two or more of the plurality of ellipses of the visual marker, estimating the pose of the first object in relation to the second object by inputting the coordinates of the plurality of ellipses into a pose estimation algorithm, and filtering results of the pose estimation algorithm.