An Improved Method to Calculate the Point-to-Surface Distance in Machining Quality Inspection

The point cloud matching problem methods play important roles in the 3D scanning and model reconstruction fields. To calculate the distances between the inspected points and the surface determines the accuracy and efficiency of the matching. The challenge is to adaptively allocate computing resources to reduce calculation redundancy and maintain accuracy. This paper proposed an improved surface subdivision method. To improve the accuracy of calculation, the necessary subdivision number are determined by analyzing the complexity of freeform surface. Simultaneously, to improve the efficiency of calculation, the subdivision number of each subdivision is diminished and converged at a reasonable value. A simulation example is used to test the validity of the proposed method and two existing methods are compared with the proposed method. The results indicate that the proposed method improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the calculation of the Point-to-Surface Distance.