A method to find local planar region from 3D range data

A fast method of plane detection for mobile robot application is proposed using the normal vector of a triangle inscribed in a small circular region such that the normal vector passes through the circumcenter area of the triangle. To reduce the effects of noises and outliers, the triangle rotates with respect to the center position of the circular region, and generates a series of inscribed triangles having different normal vectors. The direction vectors of these generated triangles are normalized and then the median direction of the normal vectors is used to test the planarity of the circular region.