A method for detection of circular arcs based on the Hough transform

The circular arc is a very useful feature for object detection and recognition in industrial environments. In this paper, a method for detection of circular arcs is described that is based on the Hough transform. The method estimates all five arc parameters and is robust in the presence of a moderate amount of noise. It has a computational and memory complexity ofO(n·m·R) andO(n·m) respectively, wheren andm are the sizes in thex andy directions andR is the maximum expected arc radius in pixels. Arcs as small as 45 degrees and radii down to 4 pixels can be detected. The computing time is almost independent of the number of circular arcs in the image.This work was supported by the Swedish Board for Technical Development, Grant No. 87-01954P.