Generating parametric models of tubes from laser scans

We present an automatic method for computing an accurate parametric model of a piecewise defined pipe surface, consisting of cylinder and torus segments, from an unorganized point set. Our main contributions are reconstruction of the spine curve of a pipe surface from surface samples, and approximation of the spine curve by G1G1 continuous circular arcs and line segments. Our algorithm accurately outputs the parametric data required for bending machines to create the reconstructed tube.