Due to the continuing progress of sensor technology, the availability of 3-D c- eras is already foreseeable. These cameras are capable of generating a large set of measurement points within a very short time. There is a variety of 3-D camera - plications in the ?elds of robotics, rapid product development and digital factories. In order to not only visualize the point cloud but also to recognize 3-D object m- els from the point cloud and then further process them in CAD systems, ef?cient and stable algorithms for 3-D information processing are required. For the au- matic segmentation and recognition of such geometric primitives as plane, sphere, cylinder, cone and torus in a 3-D point cloud, ef?cient software has recently been developed at the Fraunhofer IPA by Sung Joon Ahn. This book describes in detail the complete set of ‘best-?t’ algorithms for general curves and surfaces in space which are employed in the Fraunhofer software.
