Automatic orienting of 3D shapes by using a new data structure for object modeling.

This work presents a solution to the problem of determining the orientation of arbitrarily located 3D parts. The proposed algorithm is based on a new data structure specifically designed to store spherical representation models of 3D objects. This data structure, called Modeling Wave Set (MWS), allows keeping redundant information about local and global features of an object under a unique framework. It involves a different approach to deal with the modeling process providing new methods for solving generic problems like object recognition or pose determination. The algorithm described in this work is based on the fact that a rotation of a solid can be seen as a change in the wave used to model it, because of the invariance to spatial transformation of the MWS structure. This property derives to an algorithm simpler and with lower computational cost than any other method based on spherical representations. The algorithm has been tested over a wide set of polyhedral and free-form shapes. Success ratio and 3D orienting errors obtained with the proposed algorithm can be considered as acceptable, as it is shown in the experimental results section.