A fast detection method of arbitrary triangles for Tethered Space Robot

Concentrating on the measurement of triangular span, we present a novel detection method of arbitrary triangles for Tethered Space Robot in this paper, which is based on line extraction. Line segments are extracted firstly from the ROI containing triangular span. The distance of lines´ endpoints and the proportion of gap areas to the whole area are used to acquire triangle candidates. Then we adopt the property of inscribed circle to validate the potential triangles. Comparative experiments indicate that the proposed algorithm is able to detect triangles quickly. Most of all, the method does not rely on an edge detector.