The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded RTP-based Raindrop Geomagic (www.geomagic.com) a $100,000 SBIR Phase I grant to research the use of Morse Theory in reverse engineering. Morse Theory, which has been around for nearly 100 years, has been used to gain insight into difficult mathematical questions. In the computing world, this theory has helped researchers find discrete structure in continuous, smooth data.
Raindrop Geomagic officials said that Morse Theory can be applied to further automate reverse engineering, the process of capturing a physical object and transforming it into a surface model ready for manufacturing. The research could help deliver a sought-after advance in reverse engineering: the ability to automatically create surface patches that follow the direction and features of a triangulated model.
Raindrop Geomagic is a CED member.