1. A method for determining a pose of an object from a range image, comprising the steps of: determining a distribution of poses for an object, in which the distribution is determined from a model of the object; selecting a set of reference poses according to the distribution, such that more reference poses are selected for more probable poses than less probable poses; generating a reference image for each reference pose; and assigning the reference pose used to generate the reference image that best matches a range image including the object as the pose of the object.