Planar grouping for automatic detection of vanishing lines and points

It is demonstrated that the idea of grouping together features that satisfy a geometric relationship can be used, both for (automatic) detection and estimation of vanishing points and lines. We describe the geometry of three commonly occurring types of geometric grouping and present efficient grouping algorithms, which exploit these geometries. The three types of grouping are: (1) a family of equally spaced coplanar parallel lines; (2) a planar pattern obtained by repeating some element by translation in the plane; and (3) a set of elements arranged in a regular planar grid. Examples of automatically computing groupings, together with their vanishing points and lines, are given for a number of real images. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.