Mesh integration based on co-measurements

An algorithm for the integration of meshes derived from range data is presented. All of the triangles from either mesh which have sampled the same surface patch of the object are identified as co-measurements and only the most confidently acquired one is kept. Co-measurement identification is based on the position and orientation of the range scanner when each triangle was sampled. Once the redundant triangles have been removed what remains is a patchwork of unconnected non-intersecting meshes which cover the sampled areas of the object. Neighborhood relationships established between the edge points of each patch are used to seam them together. The final mesh is guaranteed to be plausible in the sense that each triangle represents a surface which could have been scanned given the positions and orientations of the range scanner and 2-manifold with the exception that a vertex may be incident to two triangles that are connected only through that vertex. The algorithm performs equally well in areas of low and high curvature.