ViPR (visual pattern recognition)

Bandai, one of the world’s largest toy companies, and Evolution Robotics, the leading provider of breakthrough robotic technologies for consumer products, announced the release of a new home telepresence robot powered by Evolution Robotics’ ViPR® visual pattern recognition technology.
ViPR technology is a latest technology being used in IT products.
A ViPR-enabled device can automatically detect and recognize visual patterns using low- or high-end camera sensors. The algorithms that make up the technology are particularly robust and provide an unprecedented level of reliability even with heavy distortions that can be introduced by the imaging device, a wide range of lighting conditions, and pattern occlusions.
Sony Corporation’s Entertainment Robot Company, for example, has licensed the ViPR technology for their Robotic pet dog, AIBO®, to allow users to command the dog by showing it cards having different visual patterns printed on them, and also enable the dog to autonomously find its charging station by recognizing a visual pattern printed on it.
ViPR technology can be purchased for development as part of the ERSP™ 3.0 SDK. The SDK is available for Windows or Linux. It can also be licensed as a standalone technology to be included in your products.

(ie. LaneHawk™, a new loss-prevention product for retailers, also uses ViPR technology to recognize grocery items by analyzing the printed patterns on their box, instead of using the barcode.)

reference: http://edageek.com/2006/11/27/evolution-robotics-vipr-bandai-nettansor-robot/