The invention comprises a polygonal work piece detecting and positioning method which comprises the following steps: Step 1, an edge image in a work piece image is detected, the curve set composed of curves in the edge image is acquired, and a line segment set is extracted from the curve set; Step 2, for each line segment of the line segment set, an edge forming a certain included angle with the line segment and nearest to the endpoint of the line segment is searched as the adjacent edge of the line segment, all the line segments serving as adjacent edges to each other are extracted, and a graph formed by the line segments is a polygon; and Step 3, the polygon is positioned at six degree of freedom. The polygonal work piece detecting and positioning method provided by the invention can be applied to video surveillance, intelligent transportation, video retrieval, robot navigation, human-computer interaction, military and many other fields. In addition, the method provides six-degree-of-freedom positioning of spatial planar polygons, and can be applied to industrial capture, assembly, butt joint and other fields.