A novel methodology for sailing boat waterline plane definition using 3D point cloud

Abstract

In offshore racing, sailboats with different potentialities compete to each other in the same race field. The different potentialities are due to differences on geometrical and physical characteristics of the sailboats but also on their sailing equipment. In order to have fair rating, the Offshore Racing Congress (ORC) has established the International Measurement System (IMS) which is based on a velocity prediction model developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [1] [2]. For this model, one of the key parameters which has to be calculated and may involve serious difficulties, is the definition of the waterline plane of the sailboat. Creating a 3d point cloud of the boat using a 3d laser scanner could help to overcome this problem, as it provides high accuracy in points measurements. And also a 3d point cloud processing algorithm can be developed to define the waterline plane accurately. In this paper a novel methodology on calculating the waterline plane is presented, which is based on the 3d point cloud that represents a sailing boat.