Fully automatic 3D reconstruction applied to underwater flexible joint inspection

A flexible joint structure, used in Oil & Gas Industry, presents a challenging inspection task, given their geometry, and is usually assembled in a hard access bundle. To deliver useful data for visual inspection and elastomer anomalies detection, this works presents a 3D Reconstruction Pipeline applicable to these structures. To reach this goal, a novel pipeline composed of data preprocessing, point cloud registration, target segmentation, anomalies, and visualization processing is proposed and explained in this paper. The pipeline was tested with a real-like flexible joint on an indoor pool, and a structured light sensor was used to capture multiple partial data of the target object. The achieved target reconstruction delivers a useful information source to be analyzed by inspectors.