Background:
I am working on a design in which an autonomous RC car implements a LIDAR sensor to navigate a course.
The primary LIDAR sensor returns a 270 array of points, scanning in a line like fashion, each representing the distance at a particular angle. These can easily be converted from polar to cartesian coordinates.
Question:
Given a set of points how would you estimate the number of lines that exist within this plot and the slope of each line. An explanation for a simple linear regression is not required, an explanation on how to detect discontinuities between the data is helpful.