Analysis and Synthesis of Rope Rosettes

Abstract

Creating rose rosettes and other similar interlace patterns is an old form of creative expression. Rope rosettes is rooted in the seafaring tradition, where they were made both for decoration, to protect the sailors from slipping on the deck and to limit wear and tear of the wood. The creation of new patterns was quite time-consuming with no guarantee of success.

In recent years, Nils Kristian Rossing at Trondheim Science Center has developed a method to analyze rope rosettes and describe them mathematically. His approach is based on the Fourier analysis rooted in signal theory. With the new mathematical description, rosette patterns can be synthesized easily. Rossing's work also includes extensive work in describing rosette properties and categorizing them, as well as studies on the impact of different parameters in the rosette description.

Based on Rossing's findings, the goal of this thesis is to build a software tool to automatically analyze and synthesize rope rosettes. I name this tool RosAna, and it is built using the modern tools of Qt(c++) and OpenCV. The tool has three distinct parts: image analysis to extract the rosette pattern; Fourier analysis to determine the mathematical parameters; and pattern synthesis.