Three-dimensional geometrical modeling of the exterior configuration of a cattle hoof by reverse engineering technology

Geometrical surfaces of a single cattle hoof was measured on a 3D scanner and their point clouds were obtained. The point clouds were, preliminarily, dealt with by software Surfacer, including the wipe-out of the interferential points, the simplification, the smoothing and the linkage of the point clouds. The three-dimensional exterior configuration model was reconstructed through generating the curved surface directly using characteristic curves. The errors between the three-dimensional exterior configuration model reconstructed and point clouds obtained by software Surfacer were analyzed. This work laid a basis for the animal hoof three-dimensional exterior configuration and development of the biomimetic walking technique in soft terrain machinery.