Kevin W. Bowyer - object recognition based on functionality.

• Function from visual analysis and physical interaction: a methodology for recognition of generic classes of objects,
  Melanie Sutton, Louise Stark and Kevin Bowyer, Image and Vision Computing 16 (11), 745-763, August 1998.
  DOI link to Elsevier version of this paper.
  This paper presents an overview of the GRUFF-I (Generic Recognition Using Form, Function and Interaction) system, a nonpart-based approach to generic object recognition which reasons about and generates plans for interaction with three-dimensional (3D) shapes from the categories furniture and dishes. ...
  

• Recognizing object function through reasoning about partial shape descriptions and dynamic physical properties,
  Louise Stark, Kevin W. Bowyer, Adam W. Hoover and Dmitry B. Goldgof,
  Proceedings of the IEEE 84 (11), 1640-1656, November 1996.
  

• Learning Membership Functions in a Function-based Object Recognition System,
  Kevin S. Woods, Diane Cook, Lawrence Hall, Louise Stark and Kevin W. Bowyer, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 3, 187-222, October 1995.
  

• Generic Recognition of Articulated Objects Through Reasoning About Potential Function,
  Kevin Green, David Eggert, Louise Stark, and Kevin W. Bowyer, Computer Vision and Image Understanding 62 (2), 177-193, September 1995.
  

• GRUFF-3: Generalizing the Domain of a Function-based Recognition System,
  Melanie Sutton, Louise Stark, and Kevin W. Bowyer, Pattern Recognition 27 (12), 1743-1766, December 1994.
  

• Function-based Generic Recognition for Multiple Object Categories,
  Louise Stark and Kevin W. Bowyer, CVGIP: Image Understanding 59 (1), 1-21, January 1994.
  

• An Investigation of Methods of Combining Functional Evidence for 3-D Object Recognition,
  Louise Stark, Lawrence O. Hall, and Kevin W. Bowyer, International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence 7 (3), 573-594, June 1993.
  

• Achieving Generalized Object Recognition Through Reasoning About Association of Function To Structure,
  Louise Stark and Kevin W. Bowyer.
  IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 13 (10), 1097-1104, October 1991.
  pdf of this paper.
  "The purpose of the work described here is to demonstrate the feasibility of defining an object category in terms of the functional properties shared by all objects in the category. ... A complete system has been implemented that takes the boundary surface description of a 3-D object as its input and attempts to recognize whether the object belongs to the category chair ... This is, to our knowledge the first (only) implemented system to explore the use of a purely function-based definition of an object category ... to recognize 3-D objects."