The subject invention is a surface data acquisition, storage, and assessment system and more particularly a surface data acquisition, storage, and assessment system for detecting and quantifying similarities or differences between stored data and data collected from a scan. The system operates utilizing a method or process that decreases the time required for calculating a pose estimate thus increasing its performance thereby making it more practical for many applications that require real-time operations. In a preferred embodiment of the invention the system comprises one or more sensing components for scanning and measuring various surface features of an object for determining the identity of the scanned object, and determines differences between data obtained from two or more scans.
