An extremely fast pattern based line detector

Abstract

This article describes a completely new, fully automatic line detector algorithm that takes advantage of look-up tables to recognize and fit straight line patterns. The algorithm first recognizes any possible 4×4 pixel line patterns among the binary edge pixels and then uses several small look up tables to decide whether the connected patterns form a line or not. It is designed for real time processing of high resolution images such as the ones used in computer vision applications. The algorithm's system on chip implementation is even cheaper and faster making it especially valuable for battery operated mobile robot applications. Based on the benchmarks, at the time of the writing, this algorithm is the fastest line detector in the literature.