mloss.org FLANN, Fast Library for Approximate Nearest Neighbors

FLANN, Fast Library for Approximate Nearest Neighbors 1.6.11

Marius Muja — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:32:29 -0000

FLANN is a library for performing fast approximate nearest neighbor searches in high dimensional spaces. It contains a collection of algorithms we found to work best for nearest neighbor search and a system for automatically choosing the best algorithm and optimum parameters depending on the dataset.

The latest version of FLANN is written in C++ and contains bindings for Python and MATLAB.

In our experiments we have found FLANN to be about one order of magnitude faster on many datasets(in query time), than previously available approximate nearest neighbor search software.

Before downloading FLANN from this location, check the project web page for an updated version!

Comment by chris on 2009-06-03 11:04

chris — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:04:46 -0000

I wonder, how did you create bindings to python from D? Is there something like SWIG?

Comment by Marius Muja on 2009-06-03 20:56

Marius Muja — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:56:26 -0000

The latest version of FLANN was ported to C++, and I use ctypes for the python bindings. For the D version I used the scipy.weave package (D object files and C object files can be linked together). There is also the PyD project that can generate Python bindings from D code (similar to Boost.Python for C++).

Comment by David Doria on 2011-09-10 04:12

David Doria — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 04:12:45 -0000

I would suggest making the Matlab bindings an option in the CMake. I don't have Matlab and just want to use the c++ library of FLANN. I got a build error complaining that I didn't have mex, so I just commented the add_subdirectory(matlab) line and then everything worked fine. It would be nice to be able to do this through the ccmake interface.

Comment by David Doria on 2011-09-10 04:17

David Doria — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 04:17:08 -0000

The flan_test.cc that gets built seems to expect two .dat files. It would be great if example files could be included so 1) users can test that it runs right away and 2) see the format of the input file that is expected.

Comment by Marius Muja on 2011-09-12 22:33

Marius Muja — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:33:26 -0000

The latest FLANN version(s) allow to enable/disable the building of the MATLAB bindings from the ccmake interface.