Real-time detection of elliptic shapes for automated object recognition and object tracking

The detection of varying 2D shapes is a recurrent task for Computer Vision applications, and camera based object recognition has become a standard procedure. Due to the discrete nature of digital images and aliasing effects, shape recognition can be complicated. There are many existing algorithms that discuss the identification of circles and ellipses, but they are very often limited in flexibility or speed or require high quality input data. Our work considers the application of shape recognition for processes in industrial environments and, especially the automatization requires reliable and fast algorithms at the same time. We take a very practical look at the automated shape recognition for common industrial tasks and present a very fast novel approach for the detection of deformed shapes which are in the broadest sense elliptic. Furthermore, we consider the automated recognition of bacteria colonies and coded markers for both 3D object tracking and an automated camera calibration procedure.