A new flexible part inspection method

Flexible parts like sheet metals, common in the aerospace and automotive industries, require specialized inspection due to their shape's sensitivity to orientation and support. Traditional methods involve securing the part in its designed shape for accurate measurements, but this process is time-intensive and requires specialized equipment. We propose a direct inspection method using a numerical approach that can compare different shapes of the same object. This method leverages the consistency of geodesic distances; therefore, the core of the method is the use of an algorithm for computing distance fields on point clouds (based on the fast-marching algorithm at high order), along with a feature matching algorithm to directly verify dimensions.