Fast plane fitting to many points

Question

I\'m looking to fit a plane to a set of ~ 6-10k 3D points. I\'m looking to do this as fast as possible, and accuracy is not the highest concern (frankly the plane can be off

Answer 1

In computer vision a standard way is to use RANSAC or MSAC, in your case;

1. Take 3 random points from the population
2. Calculate the plane defined by the 3 points
3. Sum the errors (distance to plane) for all of the points to that plane.
4. Keep the 3 points that show the smallest sum of errors (and fall within a threshold).
5. Repeat N iterations (see RANSAC theory to choose N, may I suggest 50?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RANSAC