  The hybrid linear modeling problem is to identify a set of d-dimensional
affine sets in a D-dimensional Euclidean space. It arises, for example, in
object tracking and structure from motion. The hybrid linear model can be
considered as the second simplest (behind linear) manifold model of data. In
this paper we will present a very simple geometric method for hybrid linear
modeling based on selecting a set of local best fit flats that minimize a
global l1 error measure. The size of the local neighborhoods is determined
automatically by the Jones' l2 beta numbers; it is proven under certain
geometric conditions that good local neighborhoods exist and are found by our
method. We also demonstrate how to use this algorithm for fast determination of
the number of affine subspaces. We give extensive experimental evidence
demonstrating the state of the art accuracy and speed of the algorithm on
synthetic and real hybrid linear data.
