Line following system and process

A method for capturing a two dimensional visual line segment image for the purpose of transposing the line segment image to a different medium, in steps comprising:

• A. scanning the line image with an optical scanning device, said scanning device creating an analog of said line image in the form of a discrete array of dark pixels and light pixels, the pattern of said dark pixels within said array corresponding in shape to the image;
• B. replicating said discrete array generated by said optical scanning device in a quantifiable, two dimensional, digital analog array wherein each point in said digital array corresponds to a single respective pixel in said discrete array;
• wherein points in said digital array corresponding to the background of the image are defined as negative points and points corresponding to non-background areas of the image are defined as positive points;
• C. designating one of said positive points in said digital array as an origin;
• D. counting the number of consecutive adjacent positive points lying on each of a plurality of preselected vectors from said origin, each of said preselected vectors forming one half of a vector pair with a directly opposing vector.
• E. storing the count data determined in step D. for each of said preselected vectors and the sum of the counts for each of said vector pairs;
• F. selecting a directional vector, said directional vector being perpendicular to the minimum width vector pair of the segment, said minimum width vector pair being defined as the vector pair having the lowest sum as determined in step E.:
• G. selecting a working point, said working point being a positive point displaced from said origin by a unit displacement along said directional vector;
• H. continually repeating step D., with the present working point being substituted for said origin, and steps E., F. and G., with each successive new one of said directional vectors being offset from the previous one of said directional vectors by no more than 45 degrees of arc, until no new working point along said directional vectors is a positive point;
• and
• I. providing the data collected and stored in the repetitions of steps D and E to an output device.