In this paper, we introduce visual contexts in terms of types and utilization methods for robust object recognition with intelligent mobile robots. One of the core technologies for intelligent robots is visual object recognition. Robust techniques are strongly required since there are many sources of visual variations such as geometric, photometric, and noise. For such requirements, we define spatial context, hierarchical context, and temporal context. According to object recognition domain, we can select such visual contexts. We also propose a unified framework which can utilize the whole contexts and validates it in real working environment. Finally, we also discuss the future research directions of object recognition technologies for intelligent robots.