Actually:

you are likely talking about DA Usikov who wrote the 1991 text "Three dimensional vision for Autonomous Vehicles: Algorithms, Problems, Perspectives."

I

Based on his body of work that I see, he is basically working on vision recognition problems, dealing (from what I can tell) with extracting 3d data from stereoscopic imaging systems. Which is all fine and dandy, but even if Mr. Usikov somehow knew what everyone else didn't, there are numerous ways to skin the cat of 'autonomous robotic vehicles' and many technologies are far more promising than Visual Recognition- namely Sonar, Radar, Lidar and IR.

Visual recognition as the 'holy grail' for robotics (or more precisely- for machines that interact with their environment) is often thought of as misguided. Its based on the observation: "well, thats how (most) animals work" Its like trying to build the first flying machine by trying to build an orinthopter and nothing else.

100 years later, we have hypersonic suborbital 'airplanes', but no orinthopters (and no interest in them).

I doubt Mr. Usikov has some 'great breakthrough' not to be found in the public literature, and even if he did- its aort-of fantastic (in the fantasia sense) that he has a 'lock' on an 'algorithm'... Thats not how academia, patenting and innovation works in Computer Science. And even supposing he did, U of M and other places he worked would actuall own the 'lock'

Davin L.