Recognizing surfaces from 3D curves

A general paradigm for recognizing 3D objects is offered, and applied to some geometric primitives (spheres, cylinders, cones, and tori). The assumption is that a curve on the surface was measured with high accuracy (for instance, by a sensory robot). Differential properties of curves and surfaces are used to recognize the surface. The motivation is twofold: the output of some devices is not surface range data, but curves. So, surface invariants, which may be simpler in some cases, cannot always be obtained. Also, a considerable speedup is obtained by using curve data, as opposed to surface data which usually contain a much higher number of points