This paper investigates the application of machine vision to the real-time target recognition in visible spectrum using MATLAB as platform. Machine vision is applied to wider and wider areas in recent years. Therefore, more and more researches have been done to investigate the applications. In this thesis we use MATLAB as the platform, and aim to recognize any target using machine vision in real-time operations. MATLAB is a well-known software, expert in matrix operations. Since digital images are represented as arrays in computer, MATLAB should be a good choice to deal with this sort of data. This research aims to develop an algorithm that allows us to pick up a target at any time and the computer can analyze the features of the target in real-time. Then the target can be recognized with the obtained features. Experiments are designed to examine the feasibility and efficiency of our algorithm.