PURPOSE: To track a boundary line at a high speed, by detecting the following boundary point from a data of eight picture element being adjacent to a present point which is tracking a boundary line, and also obtaining an output of its moving direction vector.
CONSTITUTION: A picture of an object to be measured is inputted by a television camera 1, is binary-coded, and is stored as a picture data in a picture memory 3. A position of one point on a boundary line of the object is detected by a start point detecting circuit 4 from said data. When the position of its point is provided as a present point to a block extracting circuit 5, a data of the adjacent block point is extracted at the present point. By providing this data to a tracking vector circuit 6, a boundary point is selected from eight points being adjacent to the present point, and also a moving direction vector is obtained. The position data of the boundary point selected by the position data of the present point and the moving direction vector is calculated, the boundary line is tracked by setting the selected boundary point as the present point, and a special feature of a shape of an object is detected.
ANEZAKI TAKASHI
MOTOTANI KUNIHIKO
