STEP 1: Associate an oriented plane with each data point

• for each point x, consider Nbhd(x): the points in the neighborhood of x within some user-defined distance k.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The center o and unit normal n that define the plane are calculated to solve the least squares best fit of Nbhd(x)