1. A method of teaching a camera-based object recognition system suitable for use on an automated vehicle, said method comprising: using a camera to provide a base image of an object in a natural object environment, wherein the base image includes an initial structural feature; providing a template image that corresponds to the object, wherein the template image defines a substitute structural feature comparable to the initial structural feature; and generating a training image for teaching the system, wherein the training image is generated by replacing the initial structural feature with the substitute structural feature by using a shift-map algorithm, wherein the replacement of the initial structural feature is only carried out by rearrangement of pixels of the base image, wherein the base image and the template image are compared with one another to determine a distance dimension indicating the similarity of the images, the distance dimension is used as an optimization criterion for the shift-map algorithm, and both the base image and the template image are transformed into a canonical-reference frame before the base image and the template image are compared using the distance dimension.