Shape disassembly using generating merging probability

Computer integrated manufacturing uses computer technology to integrate a manufacturing system through a man-machine interface that fills the gap between manual operation and machine processes. It is clear that a computer vision-based man-machine interface makes a fully automated system possible. The basic challenge of a vision-based interface is how to extract information from digitized images and convert it to machine-friendly "knowledge". To extract information, then, it often end up to the problem of shape decomposition. This paper proposes an new approach in decomposing compound shapes without prior knowledge of the scene. The proposed algorithm exploits the fact that planar shapes can be completely described by contour segments, and can be decomposed at their maximum concavity into simpler objects. To reduce spurious decomposition, the decomposed segments are merged into groups by analyzing and utilizing the merging hypotheses. The algorithm calculates the linking possibility by weighting the angular differentiation between two segments. The techniques are implemented and are applied to other partial shape matching problems for clustering purposes.