Signature Sequence of Intersection Curve of Two Quadrics for Exact Morphological Classification

We present an efficient method for classifying the morphology of the intersection curve of two quadrics (QSIC) in PR3, 3D real projective space; here, the term morphology is used in a broad sense to mean the shape, topological, and algebraic properties of a QSIC, including singularity, reducibility, the number of connected components, and the degree of each irreducible component, etc. There are in total 35 different QSIC morphologies with non-degenerate quadric pencils. For each of these 35 QSIC morphologies, through a detailed study of the eigenvalue curve and the index function jump we establish a characterizing algebraic condition expressed in terms of the Segre characteristics and the signature sequence of a quadric pencil. We show how to compute a signature sequence with rational arithmetic so as to determine the morphology of the intersection curve of any two given quadrics. Two immediate applications of our results are the robust topological classification of QSIC in computing B-rep surface representation in solid modeling and the derivation of algebraic conditions for collision detection of quadric primitives

Minkowski Sum Construction and other Applications of Arrangements of Geodesic Arcs on the Sphere

We present two exact implementations of efficient output-sensitive algorithms that compute Minkowski sums of two convex polyhedra in 3D. We do not assume general position. Namely, we handle degenerate input, and produce exact results. We provide a tight bound on the exact maximum complexity of Minkowski sums of polytopes in 3D in terms of the number of facets of the summand polytopes. The algorithms employ variants of a data structure that represents arrangements embedded on two-dimensional parametric surfaces in 3D, and they make use of many operations applied to arrangements in these representations. We have developed software components that support the arrangement data-structure variants and the operations applied to them. These software components are generic, as they can be instantiated with any number type. However, our algorithms require only (exact) rational arithmetic. These software components together with exact rational-arithmetic enable a robust, efficient, and elegant implementation of the Minkowski-sum constructions and the related applications. These software components are provided through a package of the Computational Geometry Algorithm Library (CGAL) called Arrangement_on_surface_2. We also present exact implementations of other applications that exploit arrangements of arcs of great circles embedded on the sphere. We use them as basic blocks in an exact implementation of an efficient algorithm that partitions an assembly of polyhedra in 3D with two hands using infinite translations. This application distinctly shows the importance of exact computation, as imprecise computation might result with dismissal of valid partitioning-motions.Comment: A Ph.D. thesis carried out at the Tel-Aviv university. 134 pages long. The advisor was Prof. Dan Halperi

Algorithmic and topological aspects of semi-algebraic sets defined by quadratic polynomial

In this thesis, we consider semi-algebraic sets over a real closed field $R$ defined by quadratic polynomials. Semi-algebraic sets of $R^k$ are defined as the smallest family of sets in $R^k$ that contains the algebraic sets as well as the sets defined by polynomial inequalities, and which is also closed under the boolean operations (complementation, finite unions and finite intersections). We prove new bounds on the Betti numbers as well as on the number of different stable homotopy types of certain fibers of semi-algebraic sets over a real closed field $R$ defined by quadratic polynomials, in terms of the parameters of the system of polynomials defining them, which improve the known results. We conclude the thesis with presenting two new algorithms along with their implementations. The first algorithm computes the number of connected components and the first Betti number of a semi-algebraic set defined by compact objects in $\mathbb{R}^k$ which are simply connected. This algorithm improves the well-know method using a triangulation of the semi-algebraic set. Moreover, the algorithm has been efficiently implemented which was not possible before. The second algorithm computes efficiently the real intersection of three quadratic surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^3$ using a semi-numerical approach.Comment: PhD thesis, final version, 109 pages, 9 figure

Surface and Volumetric Segmentation of Complex 3-D Objects Using Parametric Shape Models

The problem of part definition, description, and decomposition is central to the shape recognition systems. In this dissertation, we develop an integrated framework for segmenting dense range data of complex 3-D scenes into their constituent parts in terms of surface and volumetric primitives. Unlike previous approaches, we use geometric properties derived from surface, as well as volumetric models, to recover structured descriptions of complex objects without a priori domain knowledge or stored models. To recover shape descriptions, we use bi-quadric models for surface representation and superquadric models for object-centered volumetric representation. The surface segmentation uses a novel approach of searching for the best piecewise description of the image in terms of bi-quadric (z = f(x,y)) models. It is used to generate the region adjacency graphs, to localize surface discontinuities, and to derive global shape properties of the surfaces. A superquadric model is recovered for the entire data set and residuals are computed to evaluate the fit. The goodness-of-fit value based on the inside-outside function, and the mean-squared distance of data from the model provide quantitative evaluation of the model. The qualitative evaluation criteria check the local consistency of the model in the form of residual maps of overestimated and underestimated data regions. The control structure invokes the models in a systematic manner, evaluates the intermediate descriptions, and integrates them to achieve final segmentation. Superquadric and bi-quadric models are recovered in parallel to incorporate the best of the coarse-to-fine and fine-to-coarse segmentation strategies. The model evaluation criteria determine the dimensionality of the scene, and decide whether to terminate the procedure, or selectively refine the segmentation by following a global-to-local part segmentation approach. The control module generates hypotheses about superquadric models at clusters of underestimated data and performs controlled extrapolation of the part-model by shrinking the global model. As the global model shrinks and the local models grow, they are evaluated and tested for termination or further segmentation. We present results on real range images of scenes of varying complexity, including objects with occluding parts, and scenes where surface segmentation is not sufficient to guide the volumetric segmentation. We analyze the issue of segmentation of complex scenes thoroughly by studying the effect of missing data on volumetric model recovery, generating object-centered descriptions, and presenting a complete set of criteria for the evaluation of the superquadric models. We conclude by discussing the applications of our approach in data reduction, 3-D object recognition, geometric modeling, automatic model generation. object manipulation, and active vision

Point counting on curves using a gonality preserving lift

We study the problem of lifting curves from finite fields to number fields in a genus and gonality preserving way. More precisely, we sketch how this can be done efficiently for curves of gonality at most four, with an in-depth treatment of curves of genus at most five over finite fields of odd characteristic, including an implementation in Magma. We then use such a lift as input to an algorithm due to the second author for computing zeta functions of curves over finite fields using $p$-adic cohomology

The bottleneck degree of algebraic varieties

A bottleneck of a smooth algebraic variety $X \subset \mathbb{C}^n$ is a pair of distinct points $(x,y) \in X$ such that the Euclidean normal spaces at $x$ and $y$ contain the line spanned by $x$ and $y$. The narrowness of bottlenecks is a fundamental complexity measure in the algebraic geometry of data. In this paper we study the number of bottlenecks of affine and projective varieties, which we call the bottleneck degree. The bottleneck degree is a measure of the complexity of computing all bottlenecks of an algebraic variety, using for example numerical homotopy methods. We show that the bottleneck degree is a function of classical invariants such as Chern classes and polar classes. We give the formula explicitly in low dimension and provide an algorithm to compute it in the general case.Comment: Major revision. New introduction. Added some new illustrative lemmas and figures. Added pseudocode for the algorithm to compute bottleneck degree. Fixed some typo

Discrete Differential Geometry

This is the collection of extended abstracts for the 26 lectures and the open problem session at the fourth Oberwolfach workshop on Discrete Differential Geometry

On the algebraic Brauer classes on open degree four del Pezzo surfaces

We study the algebraic Brauer classes on open del Pezzo surfaces of degree $4$. I.e., on the complements of geometrically irreducible hyperplane sections of del Pezzo surfaces of degree $4$. We show that the $2$-torsion part is generated by classes of two different types. Moreover, there are two types of $4$-torsion classes. For each type, we discuss methods for the evaluation of such a class at a rational point over a $p$-adic field

Algebraic Smooth Occluding Contours

Computing occluding contours is a key building block of non-photorealistic rendering, but producing contours with consistent visibility has been notoriously challenging. This paper describes the first general-purpose smooth surface construction for which the occluding contours can be computed in closed form. For a given input mesh and camera viewpoint, we produce a $G^1$ piecewise-quadratic surface approximating the mesh. We show how the image-space occluding contours of this representation may then be described as piecewise rational curves. We show that this method produces smooth contours with consistent visibility much more efficiently than the state-of-the-art.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure