Registration-free localization of defects in 3-D parts from mesh metrology data using functional maps

Spectral Laplacian methods, widely used in computer graphics and manifold learning, have been recently proposed for the Statistical Process Control (SPC) of a sequence of manufactured parts, whose 3-dimensional metrology is acquired with non-contact sensors. These techniques provide an {\em intrinsic} solution to the SPC problem, that is, a solution exclusively based on measurements on the scanned surfaces or 2-manifolds without making reference to their ambient space. These methods, therefore, avoid the computationally expensive, non-convex registration step needed to align the parts, as required by previous methods for SPC based on 3-dimensional measurements. Once a SPC mechanism triggers and out-of-control alarm, however, an additional problem remains: that of locating where on the surface of the part that triggered the SPC alarm there is a significant shape difference with respect to either an in-control part or its nominal (CAD) design. In the past, only registration-based solutions existed for this problem. In this paper, we present a new registration-free solution to the part localization problem. Our approach uses a functional map between the manifolds to be compared, that is, a map between functions defined on each manifold based on intrinsic differential operators, in particular, the Laplace-Beltrami operator, in order to construct a point to point mapping between the two manifolds and be able to locate defects on the suspected part. A recursive partitioning algorithm is presented to define a region of interest on the surface of the part where defects are likely to occur, which results in considerable computational advantages. The functional map method involves a very large number of point-to-point comparisons based on noisy measurements, and a statistical thresholding method is presented to filter the false positives in the underlying massive multiple comparisons problem.