Integrated Edge and Corner Detection

Corner detection is used in many computer vision applications that require fast and efficient feature matching. For tasks such as robot localisation and navigation, the use of corners for matching is preferred over edges or other, larger, features. In recent years finite-element based methods have been used to develop gradient operators for edge detection that have improved angular accuracy over standard techniques. We extend this work to corner detection, enabling edge and corner detection to be integrated. We demonstrate that accuracy is comparable to well-known existing corner detectors, and that significantly reduced computation time can be achieved, making the approach appropriate for real-time computer vision and robotics.