3D Solid Model of different components of Saffron Flower

Saffron is the most expensive agriculture crop and spice in the world. There is very few information about physical and geometric properties of Saffron flower and its parts in academic resources. Due to the lack of a virtual model of Saffron flower it is difficult to analysis and design a post-harvesting mechanism. By generation of a 3D geometrical model of the flower as a free form, not only obtained geometric parameters of flower, but also a more accurate mechanical behavior of the flower including its aerodynamical behavior becomes possible. In this article, using reverse engineering, 3D data of Saffron flower were extracted by employing laser scanning technology, after data pre-processing and processing, the 3D model of saffron flower as a free form was developed. Because of non-rigidity and flexibility of saffron flower and the need for scanning the hidden components including anther and stigma, there is no possibility for integrated scanning of the flower. Therefore, every component of flower must be scanned individually followed by joining various components of saffron flower, after which the whole free form rigid 3D model of saffron flower was developed. Because of the very low thickness of the petals, the extracted point clouds are interfering, and using the commercial software available in the market does not allow direct modeling of the flower using the raw scanned data. An algorithm was proposed for addressing the problem of interference in point cloud and to separate point cloud of the top surface and the bottom surface of the petal named as “projected homogenous neighbors”. The algorithm is capable of solving some problems in geometric modeling of plants and flowers.