Interactive modelling of 3D-environments

Direct 3D-measurement of an environment is increasingly required for many applications such as reverse engineering and CAD modelling. 3D CAD Models are more and more important as reconstruction and documentation of existing plants as well as design studies of new plants are done in 3D recently. Especially simulation and optimisation of plants and manufacturing lines is becoming more and more important. Besides these aspects generation of basic models for mobile robot navigation (initial map) is important, as this map is the base for human robot interaction in real environments (industry, households). This calls for the development of a physical system to survey the environment as well as software tools for transforming measurement data into CAD models. Z+F have developed a laser scanner performing fast and exact, non-contact measurements. The 3D point cloud, resulting from the measurements, has to be transformed into a CAD model for documentation purposes. Conversion from point data to CAD objects is achieved by the interactive application of powerful algorithms which facilitate rapid point-to-primitive translation.