The GRUFF acronym stands for Generic Representation Using Form and Function [Stark Bowyer1991]. The GRUFF recognition system takes a 3-D shape description as input, reasons about whether the shape could belong to any of the object categories known to GRUFF, and outputs an interpretation for each category to which the object could belong. An ``interpretation" is a specified orientation and a labeling of the parts of the shape which are identified as satisfying the functional properties. See Figure 1 for an example of an interpretation.
Figure 1: GRUFF interpretation of a 3-D shape for the category
conventional chair. Elements of the shape are
labeled with the functional property they provide.