Plane segment finder: algorithm, implementation and applications

This paper describes the development of a plane segment finder, which is able to detect three-dimensional planar surfaces from input images in real-time. We propose an algorithm for detecting plane segments, that includes: 1) plane segment candidate extraction using the 3D Hough transform from depth map information; and 2) fitting the plane segment candidates to the depth map in order to detect the partial plane segment, since the extracted plane segment candidates are general planes, with no boundary. To achieve real-time plane segment finding system, we apply: 1) the recursive correlation method for depth map generation; and 2) the randomized Hough transform for plane segment extraction. Finally, experimental results using an implementation of our system along with a humanoid robot are shown.