Shape based round object detection using edge orientation histogram

Abstract

In this paper we introduce a shape based method to globally detect the ball in a RoboCup soccer scenario. The method can be used for any round object with detectable edges. The concept of integral images presented in Viola & Jones 2001, is used, however the integration is applied to a vector representation of the gradient orientation histogram of each pixel. The method takes advantage from the fact that large areas of the image can be filtered out, as these are only covered by straight edges. An overlapped binary search quickly reduces the search area and locates ball candidates in the image. The candidates are finally selected using an outlier elimination technique. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.