Robust and Exhaustive Method for Symmetry Detection from Scanned Meshes

Abstract

Engineering objects often exhibit symmetries on their surfaces for functionality or aesthetics. Detecting such symmetries from their scanned meshes enables advanced applications, such as feature-based CAD model reconstruction or mesh size reduction for efficient CAE. In this paper, we propose a new method for detecting a common class of symmetries in engineering, such as translation, rotation and reflection, from scanned meshes of a variety of objects ranging from mechanical parts to aesthetic products. Major advantages of our proposed method over conventional ones are considerable robustness for scanner noise and exhaustive detection of multiple symmetries from a mesh. We demonstrate its effectiveness from various experiments on scanned meshes acquired by laser or CT scanners. We also show that surface distortions or deformations on the object surfaces can be evaluated using symmetries quantitatively.