Combination of a Vision System and a Coordinate Measuring Machine for the Reverse Engineering of Freeform Surfaces

This paper describes a novel methodology for the reverse engineering of complex, free form surfaces, based on the integration of the measurement information from a 3D vision sensor and a coordinate measuring machine (CMM). The aim is to reconstruct the CAD model of objects of complex geometry with high accuracy and at the same time, rapidly exploiting the advantages deriving from the use of both the optical and the mechanical sensors, with a minimum of human intervention. The combination is performed at the level of measurement information, within a module for the intelligent aggregation of the information from optical and mechanical sensors. Tools are developed for digitising, filtering, grouping and surface-fitting the 3D images of the vision sensor and the point clouds from digitisation of the CMM. In the paper, the combined system is described, and two industrial applications are presented.