First many thanks go to Prof. Hans du Buf, for his supervision based
on his experience, for providing a stimulating and cheerful research environment
in his laboratory, for letting me participate in the projects that
produced results for papers, thus made me more aware of the state of the
art in Computer Vision, especially in the area of 3D recognition. Also for
his encouraging support and his way to always nd time for discussions,
and last but not the least for the cooking recipes...
Many thanks go also to my laboratory fellows, to Jo~ao Rodrigues, who
invited me to participate in FCT and QREN projects, Jaime Carvalho
Martins and Miguel Farrajota, for discussing scienti c and technical
problems, but also almost all problems in the world.
To all persons, that worked in, or visited the Vision Laboratory, especially
those with whom I have worked with, almost on a daily basis.
A special thanks to the Instituto Superior de Engenharia at UAlg and
my colleagues at the Department of Electrical Engineering, for allowing
me to suspend lectures in order to be present at conferences.
To my family, my wife and my kids
