HOME: Robust Hough-space Matching Method for Structured and Textureless Videos

Abstract

Visual front-ends for robotic localization typically rely on point-based features such as Oriented FAST and Rotated BRIEF (ORB), which frequently fail in structured environments dominated by strong linear structures or textureless surfaces. While line-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) systems mitigate this by utilizing line segments, conventional line extraction and description algorithms are computationally prohibitive for real-time edge robotics. To address this fundamental bottleneck, we propose HOME (Hough-space One-dimensional Matching of Extrema), an ultra-lightweight, training-free feature matching framework. HOME transforms images into Hough space, mapping global linear structures to stable local extrema, which serve as keypoints, thereby reformulating complex line matching into highly efficient one-dimensional point matching. The proposed 1D radial descriptor mathematically guarantees rotational and translational invariance without the overhead of explicit orientation estimation. As a proof of concept to validate the matching accuracy and efficiency of HOME, this paper focuses on homography estimation. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that HOME achieves robust registration in challenging scenarios where point-based methods fail, operating at a much faster speed than existing line-based methods. Extending this robust matching engine to full 3D pose estimation remains a highly promising future direction.