Background
In the field of industrial manufacturing and assembly, large-sized operating objects, such as aircraft engines, are often faced. The surface structure of the machine body is complex, the types and the quantity of parts are various and are densely and alternately distributed, and each part plays an important role in the running quality and the safety of the machine body. The pipeline is an important part on the aircraft engine, is densely and alternately distributed on an aircraft engine body, and is mainly used for conveying media such as oil bodies, gases and the like to the engine and the aircraft to ensure the stable operation of the engine.
The problem of micro deformation of an aircraft engine pipeline in the manufacturing and operating processes can occur due to the influence of the temperature and the pressure of the operating environment; due to the influence of the assembly precision, each pipeline may have a problem that the clearance between the pipeline and the main machine body or the pipeline group is not qualified. The above problem is the goal of constant monitoring throughout the manufacturing, assembly, and operational maintenance phases of an aircraft engine pipeline. The manufacturing precision, the installation position precision and the operation reliability of the pipeline are important to the performance and the service life of the aircraft engine. At present, in the field of engine manufacturing and assembling, a specific instrument is mostly manually held to detect the geometric appearance and the mounting clearance of a pipeline, and due to the fact that the size of a machine body is large, the detection mode has the problems of inconvenience in operation and low efficiency; meanwhile, manual detection can only be realized in a pipeline fixed-point detection mode, the whole pipeline is difficult to detect quickly at one time, and the applicability is limited. Therefore, the rapid and intelligent monitoring of the shape and the geometric parameters of the conduit on the body has important value for each link of manufacturing and assembling of the aircraft engine.
The large-scale body has a large number of pipelines on the surface, the pipelines are long and freely bent, fastening or connecting pieces with different sizes and appearances are distributed on the pipelines, and the pipelines are partially shielded. Automatically detecting three-dimensional pipelines in such a complex and large scene is a very challenging task. Most of the existing automatic pipeline detection technologies are developed based on two-dimensional image data. For example, two-dimensional pipeline detection or segmentation in images is achieved by manually building features or automatically learning pipeline features through a deep neural network model. Because the surfaces of industrial manufacturing bodies such as engines lack textures and have high light reflection problems, high exposure or shadow areas usually exist on a two-dimensional image obtained from the surface of the body, the quality of the two-dimensional pipeline image is seriously influenced by the optical imaging factors, and more rigorous requirements are provided for the two-dimensional pipeline detection and reconstruction technology. Regarding the three-dimensional pipeline technology, patent 102410811B obtains a multi-view pipeline image through a multi-view stereo vision technology, extracts the pipeline edge in the image and reconstructs the three-dimensional pipeline axis; patent CN108801175B has constructed pipeline space axis perspective projection model, acquires the pipeline image pair through binocular vision sensor, rebuilds out the three-dimensional axis of pipeline through stereo matching, and then realizes pipeline clearance monitoring. The two-dimensional image is still used as original data, the geometric parameters of the three-dimensional pipeline can be obtained through a double/multi-view dimension reconstruction process, and because the original two-dimensional data does not have the real scale and three-dimensional geometric shape information of the pipeline, the invention can not optimize or complement the reconstructed and calculated pipeline parameters by using the real three-dimensional data as reference. At present, the detection and reconstruction of a large-scale manufacturing body surface pipeline by taking three-dimensional point cloud as original data still have a less explored problem. The three-dimensional data contains original geometric information of the target, has higher information dimensionality and richer modal information, and has important significance for acquiring a complete three-dimensional pipeline model and analyzing. Compared with a two-dimensional image, the three-dimensional target avoids the problems of target scale change, posture influence, deformation and the like, and has the essential advantage of a data layer. The invention designs a free bending pipeline detection and point cloud completion technology oriented to a three-dimensional point cloud scene, and has important value for automatically, efficiently, accurately and completely monitoring the three-dimensional appearance state of a pipeline with complex distribution on the surface of a large-scale machine.
Disclosure of Invention
The invention solves the problems: aiming at the detection problem of the three-dimensional freely bent pipeline on the surface of the large industrial manufactured part, the method for detecting the large-scene freely bent pipeline and completing the point cloud by sensing in four dimensions in a time-space domain is provided.
The technical scheme of the invention is as follows: a method for detecting a large-scene free bent pipeline and complementing point clouds in a time-space domain four-dimensional sensing mode comprises the steps of firstly detecting surface characteristic points of a three-dimensional pipeline by adopting a point-to-point pipeline characteristic clustering method, respectively establishing a geometric parameter model and a time sequence parameter estimation model of the free bent pipeline in a four-dimensional time-space domain, detecting the point clouds of the three-dimensional free bent pipeline on a large manufacturing body surface, and calculating the axis and the mean radius of the point clouds. And generating a complete three-dimensional pipeline model by detecting parameters, and performing iterative optimization on the three-dimensional pipeline model by minimizing registration errors of the generated model and the original point cloud model. The invention provides a three-dimensional pipeline modeling and detecting method for sensing four-dimensional time-space domain information, which can accurately detect a three-dimensional freely-bent pipeline in a large-scale industrial scene and has high efficiency and wide applicability.
The technical scheme of the invention is that a time-space domain four-dimensional perception large-scene free bending pipeline detection and point cloud completion method comprises the following steps:
a, uniformly sampling three-dimensional points in three-dimensional point cloud of a scene to be detected, establishing a spherical support domain with a certain radius by taking each sampling point as a center, and extracting three-dimensional point cloud blocks covered by each support domain; calculating three-dimensional normal vectors of all points in the three-dimensional point cloud block and aggregating the three-dimensional normal vectors with three-dimensional position information of all three-dimensional points to form a six-dimensional point cloud block;
b, randomly sampling six-dimensional point pairs for multiple times in the six-dimensional point cloud block in the step a, and enabling the included angles of normal vectors of the six-dimensional point pairs to meet set threshold value constraint; according to the geometric relation of the cylinder, the axis and the radius of the cylinder can be solved by a pair of six-dimensional points, so that the axis and the radius of the cylinder corresponding to the six-dimensional points sampled for multiple times at random are respectively solved, and the radii of the cylinder calculated for multiple times are aggregated into a point-to-point type cylinder characteristic set;
c, performing feature clustering on the point-to-point cylindrical feature set corresponding to each point cloud block, judging whether the point cloud block to which the point-to-point cylindrical feature set belongs is a three-dimensional pipeline surface point according to the ratio of the inner points of the clustered maximum clusters, and realizing automatic detection of the three-dimensional pipeline surface feature points in the scene point cloud;
d, establishing a parameterized geometric model of the pipeline in a four-dimensional space-time domain, expressing the freely bent pipeline as a discrete parameterized cylindrical section in the three-dimensional space domain and a time sequence polymerization in a one-dimensional time domain, wherein the time sequence polymerization is a time sequence extension process of the cylindrical section taking local point cloud where the feature points are located as an initial moment, and the cylindrical section at each moment is parameterized into an axial vector and a cylinder radius in the three-dimensional space domain;
e, establishing a time sequence parameter estimation model of the pipeline in a four-dimensional space-time domain, and respectively performing extension and parameter estimation on the cylindrical sections from the initial time to the two ends of the current axis in an iteration mode, wherein the parameter estimation of the cylindrical sections at all times is a fusion filtering result of time domain prediction parameters and resolving parameters of the geometric model in the three-dimensional space domain according to the step d, and finally detecting and obtaining free bending pipeline surface point clouds for sensing four-dimensional space-time information and parameterized model representations thereof, namely the axis and the radius of the three-dimensional pipeline;
f, sampling a point on the three-dimensional pipeline axis obtained by solving in the step e as an initial time point according to the pipeline parameterized geometric model established in the step d, and reconstructing a complete three-dimensional pipeline surface in a time sequence extending mode at certain time intervals; and (3) taking the minimum non-rigid registration error of the reconstructed pipeline model and the original three-dimensional point cloud scene as a target function, iteratively solving to obtain the optimal three-dimensional pipeline parameters, and finally realizing the detection and point cloud completion of the freely bent pipeline in the three-dimensional point cloud scene.
Further, in the step a, three-dimensional points { p) are uniformly sampled in the three-dimensional point cloud of the scene to be detectedi∈R3}(R3Representing a three-dimensional spatial domain) with each sample point piAs a center, establishing a spherical supporting domain with a certain radius r and extracting a three-dimensional point cloud block S covered by the supporting domaini={pij∈R3And calculating each three-dimensional point p in the point cloud blockijOf three-dimensional normal vector nij∈R3And aggregating with three-dimensional position information to form six-dimensional point cloud block S'i={p′ij∈R6},R6Denotes a six-dimensional spatial domain of p'ij={pij,nij}。
Further, the step b is specifically realized as follows:
(1) for each six-dimensional point cloud block S'
iRandomly sampling six-dimensional point pair p'
im,p′
inAnd enabling the included angle of the normal vector of the six-dimensional point pair to meet the set threshold value constraint
Wherein n is
imAnd n
inRespectively are normal vectors of the six-dimensional point pairs, and epsilon is an included angle threshold value so as to ensure the accuracy of subsequent six-dimensional point pair type cylindrical feature calculation;
(2) and (3) calculating the cylinder characteristic parameters of each six-dimensional point pair: the cylinder axis and radius are calculated by first calculating the normal to both directions nim,ninThe vector axis of ═ nim×ninLet a plane normal to axis be P1(ii) a Then, p 'is calculated over one sampling point'imNormal direction n ofimAnd is perpendicular to the plane P1Plane P of2Calculating another sampling point p'inNormal direction n ofinIn a straight line to the plane P2Is a point on the axis of the cylindrical section, and is p 'to the sampling point'inThe distance between the point cloud blocks is the radius of the cylindrical section, the solved radius of the cylinder is used as a characteristic, and the radius of the cylinder obtained by resolving the six-dimensional point pairs sampled for many times is aggregated into a point-to-point type cylindrical characteristic set of the point cloud block.
Further, the step c specifically includes:
if one point cloud block is a three-dimensional pipeline surface point cloud, the following points exist: the characteristics in the point-to-point type cylindrical characteristic set constructed on the point cloud block have obvious density center and aggregation, the characteristic components in the point-to-point type cylindrical characteristic set corresponding to each point cloud block are clustered, whether the point cloud block to which the point-to-point type cylindrical characteristic set belongs is a three-dimensional pipeline surface point or not is judged according to the internal point proportion of the maximum cluster after clustering, and the automatic detection of the three-dimensional pipeline surface characteristic points in the scene point cloud is realized.
Further, the step d is in four dimensionsEstablishing a parameterized geometric model of the pipeline in the airspace, and enabling the ith freely-bent pipeline pipe to be pipe
iExpressed as parameterized cylindrical segments seg discrete over one-dimensional time domain t
itTime-sequential polymerization of (i.e.
The aggregation is a time sequence extension process which takes the local pipeline section where the characteristic point detected in the step c is as the initial, and the pipeline section seg at each moment t
itParameterized in three-dimensional spatial domain as seg
it=f(cen
it,dir
it,r
it) In which cen
itIs an axial center point of the pipe section, dir
itIs axial to the pipe section, r
itPipe segment radius.
Further, the step e is specifically implemented as follows:
(1) establishing a time sequence parameter estimation model of the pipeline in a four-dimensional time-space domain, performing fusion estimation on two parameters of the axis and the axis of the pipeline section in the three-dimensional space domain at each moment, wherein the time sequence parameter estimation model fuses two parts of parameter estimation results, and the time sequence parameter estimation model is respectively a predicted value of the pipeline section parameter at the current moment and a geometric solution value of the pipeline parameter at the current moment for the pipeline section parameter at the previous moment, and the model is as follows:
wherein
And
respectively obtaining the optimal axis and axis estimation value of the pipeline section at the last moment;
and
respectively the most of the pipeline segments at the current momentPreferred axis and axis estimates; a. the
6×6A pipeline parameter prediction matrix is used for predicting pipeline parameters at the next moment at a certain time interval along the axial direction of the pipeline; k
6×6Is a gain matrix; h
6×6Is an observation matrix of the pipeline parameters; n 'of'
tAnd dir'
tD, respectively resolving the axis and the axis value of the pipeline section obtained at the current moment according to the parameterized geometric model in the step d;
(2) c, performing cylinder fitting on the local point cloud block where the pipeline characteristic points are located and obtained through detection in the step c to obtain a parameterized representation seg of the pipeline sectioni0={ceni0,diri0,ri0Where ceni0Is the axial center point of the pipeline section, diri0Is axial to the pipe section, ri0Pipe segment radius) as starting time t0The state of the pipeline parameters; according to the time sequence parameter estimation model, continuously extending the pipeline sections and estimating parameters from the initial moment to the two ends of the current axis in an iteration mode; the estimation of the pipeline section parameter at each moment t is performed by a fusion filtering result of a time domain prediction parameter and a three-dimensional space domain geometric resolving parameter, and finally, the free bending pipeline surface point cloud for sensing four-dimensional space-time information and the parameterized model representation thereof, namely the axis and the radius of a three-dimensional pipeline are detected, wherein the radius of the whole pipeline adopts the radius { r } of the pipeline section at each momentitThe largest cluster mean obtained via mean clustering.
Further, the step f is specifically realized as follows:
(1) sampling a point on the three-dimensional pipeline axis calculated in the step e as an initial time point, and reconstructing a complete three-dimensional pipeline surface in a time sequence extending mode at certain time intervals according to the pipeline parameterized geometric model in the step d to realize the completion of pipeline point cloud in the original scene;
(2) and (3) performing iterative optimization on the axis and radius parameters of the reconstructed three-dimensional pipeline by taking the minimum non-rigid registration error of the reconstructed model and the original three-dimensional point cloud scene as a target function to obtain a complete pipeline point cloud model with higher quality and geometric accuracy, and finally realizing detection and point cloud completion of the freely bent pipeline in the three-dimensional point cloud scene.
Compared with the prior art, the method for detecting the characteristics of the freely bent pipeline and completing the point cloud in the large-scale industrial scene has the advantages that the detection and point cloud completion method is carried out based on three-dimensional point cloud data, the data modality is not influenced by environmental illumination and shadow change, the three-dimensional point cloud data presents the geometric shape information of the real scale of the target, and the problems of target scale change, imaging projection deformation and the like in a two-dimensional image are solved; the time-sequence free bending pipeline detection effectively utilizes the prediction capability of a time domain on the pipeline characteristics of a three-dimensional space domain, and is a time-space four-dimensional pipeline detection method; the pipeline feature construction form based on the point-to-point method is simple and efficient, the calculation complexity is low, and the method is suitable for industrial large-scene application occasions.
Compared with the prior art, the invention has the advantages that:
(1) compared with a pipeline detection technology based on a two-dimensional image, the pipeline detection method based on the two-dimensional image can detect and obtain a pipeline model with real geometric dimension and complete three-dimensional shape information, avoids the influence of environmental illumination and shadow change in the detection process, and has the characteristic of scale and attitude invariance;
(2) the geometric parameter calculation process of the three-dimensional pipeline integrates the calculation value of the pipeline section in the three-dimensional space domain and the predicted value of the one-dimensional time domain at each moment, and compared with the pipeline parameter calculation process based on a single domain, the pipeline axis obtained by calculation is smoother; due to the prediction of the time domain dimension, the pipeline detection process can overcome the obstruction and shielding of the pipeline connecting piece, so that more complete and continuous whole pipeline detection is realized;
(3) the pipeline geometric parameterized model of four-dimensional space-time perception provided by the invention expresses the pipeline as time-sequence space aggregation of discrete pipeline segments, so that the pipeline geometric parameterized model is particularly suitable for freely-bent pipeline detection; the point-to-point pipeline characteristic detection provided by the invention only has the characteristic of small calculated amount, and is particularly suitable for large industrial scenes.
Detailed Description
The technical solutions in the embodiments of the present invention will be described clearly and completely with reference to the accompanying drawings in the embodiments of the present invention, and it is obvious that the described embodiments are only a part of the embodiments of the present invention, rather than all embodiments, and all other embodiments obtained by a person skilled in the art based on the embodiments of the present invention belong to the protection scope of the present invention without creative efforts.
The general implementation flowchart of a specific embodiment of the present invention, as shown in fig. 1, specifically includes the following steps:
step 11: uniformly sampling three-dimensional points in the three-dimensional point cloud of a scene to be detected, establishing a spherical support domain with a certain radius by taking each sampling point as a center, and extracting three-dimensional point cloud blocks covered by each support domain; and calculating the three-dimensional normal vector of each point in the point cloud block and aggregating the three-dimensional normal vector with the three-dimensional position information to form the six-dimensional point cloud block.
Step 12: for each six-dimensional point cloud block, randomly sampling six-dimensional point pairs pair for multiple times
i={p′
im,p′
inAnd enabling the included angle of the normal vector of the point pair to meet certain threshold value constraint
So as to ensure the accuracy of the subsequent cylindrical feature solution. In this embodiment, the normal angle threshold of the point pair is set to 30 °, and 50 times of sampling of the random six-dimensional point cloud blocks are performed in each point cloud block;
and (3) calculating the cylinder characteristic parameters of each six-dimensional point pair: the cylinder axis and radius are calculated by first calculating the normal to both directions nim,ninThe vector axis of ═ nim×ninLet a plane normal to axis be P1(ii) a Then, p 'is calculated over one sampling point'imNormal direction n ofimAnd is perpendicular to the plane P1Plane P of2Calculating another sampling point p'inNormal direction n ofinIn a straight line to the plane P2Is a point on the axis of the cylindrical section, and is p 'to the sampling point'inThe distance between the point cloud blocks is the radius of the cylindrical section, the solved radius of the cylinder is used as a characteristic, and the radius of the cylinder obtained by resolving the six-dimensional point pairs sampled for many times is aggregated into a point-to-point type cylindrical characteristic set of the point cloud block. In this embodiment, 50 random samples are performed in each cloud block, so that a 50-dimensional point-to-point cylindrical feature set is finally formed.
Step 13: and performing feature clustering on the point-to-point cylindrical feature set corresponding to each point cloud block, and judging whether the point cloud block to which the point-to-point cylindrical feature set belongs is a three-dimensional pipeline surface point cloud block or not according to the internal point proportion of the clustered maximum cluster, wherein a mean value clustering algorithm is adopted in the embodiment, the clustering bandwidth is set to be 0.0015, and the maximum cluster point proportion threshold of the pipeline feature points is judged to be 0.7. Fig. 2 shows a central point of a cloud block of a three-dimensional pipeline surface point detected from a three-dimensional point cloud on the local surface of an engine, wherein a scene to be detected is the local surface of an engine body, 3 pipelines are distributed on the surface, as indicated by the numbers 1 to 3 in the figure, wherein the number 1 pipeline and the number 2 pipeline are isolated due to the fixation of the same clamp member, a joint is arranged at the end of the number 3 pipeline, and the number 1 pipeline and the number 3 pipeline are staggered; the points with larger particles in fig. 2 are the central points of the three-dimensional pipeline surface point cloud blocks automatically detected in the local scene of the engine body, and the points are distributed on the pipeline surface without error detection points.
Step 14: and (3) establishing a pipeline parameterized geometric model in a four-dimensional time-space domain, wherein an upper right sub-graph is a rendering graph of the three-dimensional bent pipeline, and a main graph is a modeling graph, as shown in FIG. 3. The axis of the pipeline is taken as a time domain coordinate axis, and the freely bent pipeline is expressed as a discrete parameterized cylindrical section on a three-dimensional space domain and a time sequence aggregation of the parameterized cylindrical section on a one-dimensional time domain. The aggregation is a time sequence extension process which takes a pipeline section where the characteristic point is located as an initial point, and the pipeline section at each moment is parameterized into an axial vector and a cylinder radius in a three-dimensional space domain.
Step 15: according to the parameterized geometric model of the pipeline in the step 14, the time sequence parameter estimation of the pipeline is carried out in a four-dimensional time space domain based on a Kalman time domain filtering model, and the parameterized representation seg of the pipeline segment is carried out by using the local point cloud block where the pipeline characteristic point detected in the step 13 is locatedi0={ceni0,diri0,ri0And f, taking the state of the parameter as the starting time T of the pipeline detection being 0. In this schematic diagram, the starting time T is 0, and is placed at the end of the pipeline, and only the process of extending the axis of the pipeline to one end is explained in detail, (if the starting time is located in the middle section of the pipeline, the extending processes from the starting time to the two ends of the axis are consistent with this explanation, and are not described in detail). And (3) performing iterative extension on the cylindrical section from the initial moment along the T axis of the time domain coordinate system, wherein the cylindrical section parameter estimation at each moment is a fusion filtering result of time domain prediction parameters and three-dimensional space domain geometric resolving parameters. In this example, the time domain parameter estimation model is established based on the kalman filter model as follows:
wherein
And
respectively is the optimal axle center and the optimal axis of the pipeline segment at the last moment;
and
respectively obtaining the optimal axis and axis estimation results of the pipeline section at the current moment; a. the
6×6Estimating a matrix for the pipeline axis, wherein the matrix is used for predicting the pipeline parameter at the next moment along the axial direction at a certain time interval; k
6×6Is a Kalman gain matrix, which is at eachThe time is updated; h
6×6Is an observation matrix of the pipeline parameters, which is set as a unit matrix in the example; n 'of'
tAnd dir'
tRespectively obtaining the axis and the axis of the pipeline section at the current moment according to the fitting of the three-dimensional point cloud block in the local support domain;
in fig. 3, point a is the axis point of the pipeline segment calculated at time t-1, and the predicted value of the pipeline segment parameter at time t can be obtained from the pipeline segment parameter at point a; according to the parameterized geometric model of the pipeline, the measured value of the parameter of the pipeline section at the time t can be calculated by local point cloud of the pipeline section at the time t, and the optimal parameter value of the pipeline section at the time t, namely the optimal parameter of the pipeline section where the point B is located, can be obtained by fusing the measured value and the predicted value. And performing iterative fusion calculation at each moment to finally detect and obtain the point cloud of the surface of the free bent pipeline sensing the four-dimensional space-time information and the parameterized model representation of the pipeline, namely the axis and the radius of the three-dimensional pipeline, wherein the radius of the whole pipeline is the radius { r } of the pipeline section at each momentitThe largest cluster mean obtained via mean clustering. The point cloud of the surfaces of the three freely bent pipelines detected in the engine scene of the example is shown in fig. 4, the axes of the three detected bent pipelines are displayed in the pipelines in a three-dimensional point mode, wherein the No. 1 and the No. 2 pipelines both span the partition and the shelter of the hoop connecting piece, and the complete extension detection of the whole pipeline is realized.
Step 16: sampling a point on each three-dimensional pipeline axis as an initial time point according to the pipeline parameterized geometric model established in the step 14, and reconstructing a complete three-dimensional pipeline surface in a time sequence extending mode at certain time intervals; with the minimum non-rigid registration error of the reconstructed pipeline model and the original three-dimensional point cloud scene as a target function, iteratively calculating optimal three-dimensional pipeline parameters, and finally realizing detection and point cloud completion of a freely bent pipeline in the three-dimensional point cloud scene, for example, fig. 5 is an example of the reconstructed and optimized three-dimensional freely bent pipeline model, wherein three complete pipeline models with the numbers of 1,2 and 3 in the figure respectively correspond to the reconstruction results of No. 1 to No. 3 pipelines in the original point cloud, and the reconstructed pipeline model has a complete pipeline surface compared with the pipeline point cloud in the original scene, so that the defect of the partial surface of the pipeline caused by self-shielding of the original point cloud under an acquisition view angle is compensated, and the function of completing the original pipeline point cloud is achieved; this example also illustrates that the present technique is applicable to pipes of various degrees of curvature.
The invention provides a four-dimensional space-time perception large-scene free bending pipeline detection and point cloud completion method which mainly comprises 6 steps of six-dimensional characteristic point sampling, point pair type cylindrical characteristic set construction, three-dimensional pipeline surface characteristic point detection, three-dimensional pipeline parameter initialization, four-dimensional space-time domain detection of a three-dimensional pipeline, and three-dimensional pipeline model completion and optimization. The method of the invention is tested on a three-dimensional point cloud model of the aeroengine, can detect freely bent pipelines distributed on the surface and carry out point cloud completion in a model generation mode, and meanwhile, the pipeline detection algorithm of the invention can cross over the pipeline connecting piece and other interferents to realize the detection of the whole pipeline. Therefore, the invention has theoretical feasibility and practical effectiveness. The invention depends on three-dimensional point cloud data to carry out pipeline detection in a three-dimensional mode, avoids the interference of ambient illumination, shadow and highlight body surface to the detection process, has stronger environmental adaptability, and is particularly suitable for the detection and model completion of multi-free bent pipelines in large-scale complex scenes.
Although illustrative embodiments of the present invention have been described above to facilitate the understanding of the present invention by those skilled in the art, it should be understood that the present invention is not limited to the scope of the embodiments, but various changes may be apparent to those skilled in the art, and it is intended that all inventive concepts utilizing the inventive concepts set forth herein be protected without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined and limited by the appended claims.