A method for the Automatic Registration of Hull Blocks Point Clouds

The deviation analysis of hull construction is a common problem in shipbuilding. In this paper, we present an automatic registration method of hull blocks points measured by Total Station based on principal component analysis (PCA) and the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm. The method is divided into two steps. The first step rough registration based on PCA can narrow the dislocation between measurement points and CAD model points giving closed initialization. The second step refined registration based on ICP can obtain the optimal solution. The algorithm can automatically match measurement data with CAD model without prior information on transformation. We have applied this method to the registration of the Hull Block Point Clouds in a bulk carrier. Our result shows that the algorithm works efficiently.