Surface patch characteristics

Introduction on how geometric characteristics are evaluated for a point cloud, which can be, e.g., a surface patch. First part shows how principal components depend on the data. When principal components are computed for every individual surface patch, they can be used to find dimensionality and direction estimates for them. The end part of the animation shows how the principal components of neighboring surface patches can be used for a more accurate direction estimate by finding a direction that perpendicular to the plane spanned by the smallest principal components.

This animation was produced by the Inverse Problems research group in the Department of Mathematics at Tampere University of Technology (http://math.tut.fi/inversegroup).

Animation created using Blender (http://www.blender.org).

Music:
Brittle Rille Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Sound effects:
Whooshes - 18 - Wooshes - Various.wav
by koroshiya1 at http://www.freesound.org/
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

door_slam.wav
by primeval_polypod at http://www.freesound.org/
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/