Real-Time Feature Detection Using the Hough Transform

The Hough transform is a well-known pattern recognition technique for finding parametric curves and general shapes in an image. This research demonstrates that it is equally well suited for real-time symbol detection. Both the parametric and generalized Hough transforms produce results of high accuracy and excellent performance in real-time video streams, compared with classical techniques such as correlation-based template matching. Using the Hough transform, detection of reasonably sized features may be performed at video frame rates, sufficient for most real-time pattern recognition tasks. Video imagery from an unmanned aerial vehicle competition is used for illustration.