The present invention is operative to determine the angular pose of an assumed object. A series of projection sums are calculated from a sample image of the known object where the known object has an assumed pose. The projection sums are calculated for a range of angles and organized into a two dimensional array coined a projection image. An image of the known object is provided where the known object has an unknown pose. A projection sum is calculated across the image of the known object with the unknown pose preferably at the perpendicular. This projection sum is correlated against the projection image and the angle corresponding to the best correlation is determined to be the angular pose of the known object.