1. A method for recognizing a known object in a field of view of a machine vision system, comprising: capturing a bitmap image file of the field of view employing the machine vision system; executing a first feature extraction of the bitmap image file to generate appearance features including a color histogram and an edge direction histogram; identifying a reduced search space based upon the appearance features including the color histogram and the edge direction histogram; executing a second feature extraction of the bitmap image file to identify geometric features including a viewpoint feature histogram and an ensemble of shape functions associated therewith; fusing the appearance features and the geometric features with contents of the reduced search space; comparing the fused appearance features, geometric features and contents of the reduced search space with a plurality of predetermined partial views of a plurality of known objects; and recognizing, by the controller, one of the known objects based upon the comparing.