Ageometric framework for the recognition of three-dimensional objects represented by point
clouds is introducedin this paper. The proposed approach is based on comparing distributions
of intrinsic measurements on the point cloud. In particular, intrinsic distances are exploited as
signatures for representing the point clouds. The first signatureweintroduce is the histogram
of pairwise diffusion distances between all points on the shape surface. These distances represent
the probability of traveling from one point to another in a fixed number of random steps,
the average intrinsic distances of all possible paths of a given number of steps between the
two points. This signature is augmented by the histogram of the actual pairwise geodesic distances
in the point cloud, the distribution of the ratio between these two distances, as well as
the distribution of the number of times each point lies on the shortest paths between other
points. These signatures are not only geometric but...