Processing range data for reverse engineering and virtual reality

Abstract

Optical 3-D sensors are used as tools for reverse engineering and virtual reality to digitize the surface of real three-dimensional objects. We discuss an almost fully automatic method to generate a surface description based on a mesh of curved or flat triangles. The method includes mesh reduction, smoothing, and reconstruction of missing data. The generated meshes feature minimum curvature variations and are therefore especially suited for visualization and rapid prototyping.