Simplification of 3D point cloud data based on ray theory

Changsu Liao¹, Xiaojing Niu¹, Meili Wang¹, Dongjian He²

¹College of Information Engineering, Northwest A & F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China
²Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Northwest A & F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China

To effectively reduce the amount of 3D point cloud data, whose shape is symmetrical or spherical, this paper proposes an efficient simplification algorithm based on ray theory. Meanwhile, a boundary retention method based on the distribution uniformity of neighbouring data points is used to keep the model complete. Avoiding time-consuming recursion and curvature estimation, the proposed method is much efficient and achieves good simplification results.