Patent ID: 11954798
Assignee: FARO TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. A computer-implemented method for automatic selection of a region in a three-dimensional (3D) point cloud, the method comprising:
point cloud;
receiving an initial seed point of seed points for creating the region in the 3D performing a first process comprising:
determining neighbor points for a given seed point of the seed points in the 3D point cloud; and
for each of the neighbor points of the given seed point, performing a second process comprising:
responsive to a color difference of a given neighbor point from the given seed point being less than a neighbor color distance threshold and responsive to an angle between a normal of the given neighbor point and a normal of the given seed point being less than a neighbor normal angle threshold, adding the given neighbor point to the region in the 3D point cloud and determining a curvature for the given neighbor point by calculating surface variance using covariance analysis; and
responsive to the curvature at the given neighbor point being less than a curvature threshold, responsive to a color difference of the given neighbor point from the initial seed point being less than an initial seed color distance threshold, and responsive to an angle between a normal of the given neighbor point and a normal of the initial seed point being less than an initial seed normal angle threshold, adding the given neighbor point to the seed points in order to perform the first process for the given neighbor point having been added,
wherein the color difference is determined using a Euclidian distance between two RGB vectors.