Reconstruction of surfaces of revolution with partial sampling

Current surface reconstruction algorithms focus on complex surfaces or irregular surfaces. However, surfaces of revolution are very important in industrial applications and reconstruction of rotating surfaces are often required. To reconstruct a surface of revolution is to determine its axis and generatrix. The main obstacle is derived from, different from surfaces used in current surface reconstruction, the data of a surface of revolution are typically partially sampled. It makes the reconstruction of rotating surfaces a real interesting problem. In this paper, we present an algorithm to compute the axis and generatrix of a surface of revolution in such partially sampled case. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.