Algorithms for fat objects : decompositions and applications

Computational geometry is the branch of theoretical computer science that deals with algorithms and data structures for geometric objects. The most basic geometric objects include points, lines, polygons, and polyhedra. Computational geometry has applications in many areas of computer science, including computer graphics, robotics, and geographic information systems. In many computational-geometry problems, the theoretical worst case is achieved by input that is in some way "unrealistic". This causes situations where the theoretical running time is not a good predictor of the running time in practice. In addition, algorithms must also be designed with the worst-case examples in mind, which causes them to be needlessly complicated. In recent years, realistic input models have been proposed in an attempt to deal with this problem. The usual form such solutions take is to limit some geometric property of the input to a constant. We examine a specific realistic input model in this thesis: the model where objects are restricted to be fat. Intuitively, objects that are more like a ball are more fat, and objects that are more like a long pole are less fat. We look at fat objects in the context of five different problems—two related to decompositions of input objects and three problems suggested by computer graphics. Decompositions of geometric objects are important because they are often used as a preliminary step in other algorithms, since many algorithms can only handle geometric objects that are convex and preferably of low complexity. The two main issues in developing decomposition algorithms are to keep the number of pieces produced by the decomposition small and to compute the decomposition quickly. The main question we address is the following: is it possible to obtain better decompositions for fat objects than for general objects, and/or is it possible to obtain decompositions quickly? These questions are also interesting because most research into fat objects has concerned objects that are convex. We begin by triangulating fat polygons. The problem of triangulating polygons—that is, partitioning them into triangles without adding any vertices—has been solved already, but the only linear-time algorithm is so complicated that it has never been implemented. We propose two algorithms for triangulating fat polygons in linear time that are much simpler. They make use of the observation that a small set of guards placed at points inside a (certain type of) fat polygon is sufficient to see the boundary of such a polygon. We then look at decompositions of fat polyhedra in three dimensions. We show that polyhedra can be decomposed into a linear number of convex pieces if certain fatness restrictions aremet. We also show that if these restrictions are notmet, a quadratic number of pieces may be needed. We also show that if we wish the output to be fat and convex, the restrictions must be much tighter. We then study three computational-geometry problems inspired by computer graphics. First, we study ray-shooting amidst fat objects from two perspectives. This is the problem of preprocessing data into a data structure that can answer which object is first hit by a query ray in a given direction from a given point. We present a new data structure for answering vertical ray-shooting queries—that is, queries where the ray’s direction is fixed—as well as a data structure for answering ray-shooting queries for rays with arbitrary direction. Both structures improve the best known results on these problems. Another problem that is studied in the field of computer graphics is the depth-order problem. We study it in the context of computational geometry. This is the problem of finding an ordering of the objects in the scene from "top" to "bottom", where one object is above the other if they share a point in the projection to the xy-plane and the first object has a higher z-value at that point. We give an algorithm for finding the depth order of a group of fat objects and an algorithm for verifying if a depth order of a group of fat objects is correct. The latter algorithm is useful because the former can return an incorrect order if the objects do not have a depth order (this can happen if the above/below relationship has a cycle in it). The first algorithm improves on the results previously known for fat objects; the second is the first algorithm for verifying depth orders of fat objects. The final problem that we study is the hidden-surface removal problem. In this problem, we wish to find and report the visible portions of a scene from a given viewpoint—this is called the visibility map. The main difficulty in this problem is to find an algorithm whose running time depends in part on the complexity of the output. For example, if all but one of the objects in the input scene are hidden behind one large object, then our algorithm should have a faster running time than if all of the objects are visible and have borders that overlap. We give such an algorithm that improves on the running time of previous algorithms for fat objects. Furthermore, our algorithm is able to handle curved objects and situations where the objects do not have a depth order—two features missing from most other algorithms that perform hidden surface removal

Solid-Solid Phase Transitions in Colloidal Matter

Phase transitions are ubiquitous in nature, and observed throughout everyday life from the melting of ice to the magnetization of iron. In particular, solid–solid phase transitions are important in many areas such as metallurgy, geosciences, and the design of reconfigurable materials. Following the recent initiative of using nano building blocks to design next generation materials, we answer fundamental questions about solid–solid phase transitions in colloidal matter and guide the design of ma- terials that can change phase. Using the “Digital Alchemy” framework, we extend thermodynamic ensembles to include particle shape as a thermodynamic variable. This framework enables us to study the effect of altering particle shape in solid–solid phase transitions. We first study the thermodynamic order of two different solid–solid phase tran- sitions (face-centered cubic (FCC)↔body-centered cubic (BCC) and BCC↔simple cubic (SC)) in hard-particle systems upon an instantaneous change in particle shape. By calculating the Landau free energy, we are able to determine the thermody- namic order of these two phase transitions. We find FCC↔BCC is first order while BCC↔SC is second order. This work is followed up by a more detailed investigation of the FCC↔BCC transition to explore whether it can be second order. We next study the design of pressure-induced solid–solid phase transitions. Here, we incorporate varying particle shape as a part of the Monte Carlo process to find the optimal shape for a given phase transition. We successfully designed pressure driven FCC→BCC and BCC→SC transitions using three different particle shape constraints. We also study the kinetic transition pathway between solid phases. Our results show that there are similarities of the pathways of an entropic system and an atom- istic system. This demonstrates that we can use entropic systems as a toy model to understand better how the transformations happen in an atomistic system. Results from this dissertation give insight into the fundamental nature of the most common, yet poorly understood phase transitions in nature, and provide new minimal models for understanding solid–solid transitions in atomic systems. Our findings also provide guidance for the next generation of materials design.PHDPhysicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146134/1/xiyudu_1.pd

Virtual reality based creation of concept model designs for CAD systems

This work introduces a novel method to overcome most of the drawbacks in traditional methods for creating design models. The main innovation is the use of virtual tools to simulate the natural physical environment in which freeform. Design models are created by experienced designers. Namely, the model is created in a virtual environment by carving a work piece with tools that simulate NC milling cutters. Algorithms have been developed to support the approach, in which the design model is created in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment and selection and manipulation of tools can be performed in the virtual space. The desianer\u27s hand movements generate the tool trajectories and they are obtained by recording the position and orientation of a hand mounted motion tracker. Swept volumes of virtual tools are generated from the geometry of the tool and its trajectories. Then Boolean operations are performed on the swept volumes and the initial virtual stock (work piece) to create the design model. Algorithms have been developed as a part of this work to integrate the VR environment with a commercial CAD/CAM system in order to demonstrate the practical applications of the research results. The integrated system provides a much more efficient and easy-to-implement process of freeform model creation than employed in current CAD/CAM software. It could prove to be the prototype for the next-generation CAD/CAM system

Boolean operations on 3D selective Nef complexes : data structure, algorithms, optimized implementation, experiments and applications

Nef polyhedra in d-dimensional space are the closure of half-spaces under boolean set operations. Consequently, they can represent non-manifold situations, open and closed sets, mixed-dimensional complexes, and they are closed under all boolean and topological operations, such as complement and boundary. The generality of Nef complexes is essential for some applications. In this thesis, we present a new data structure for the boundary representation of three-dimensional Nef polyhedra and efficient algorithms for boolean operations. We use exact arithmetic to avoid well known problems with floating-point arithmetic and handle all degeneracies. Furthermore, we present important optimizations for the algorithms, and evaluate this optimized implementation with extensive experiments. The experiments supplement the theoretical runtime analysisNef-Polyeder sind d-dimensionale Punktmengen, die durch eine endliche Anzahl boolescher Operationen über Halbräumen generiert werden. Sie sind abgeschlossen hinsichtlich boolescher und topologischer Operationen. Als Konsequenz daraus können sie nicht-mannigfaltige Situationen, offene und geschlossene Mengen und gemischt-dimensionale Komplexe darstellen. Die Allgemeinheit von Nef-Komplexen ist unentbehrlich für einige Anwendungen. In dieser Doktorarbeit stellen wir eine neue Datenstruktur vor, die eine Randdarstellung von dreidimensionalen Nef-polyedern und Algorithmen für boolesche Operationen realisiert. Wir benutzen exakte Arithmetik um die bekannten Probleme mit Gleitkommaarithmetik und Degeneriertheiten zu vermeiden. Außerdem präsentieren wir wichtige Optimierungen der Algorithmen und bewerten die optimierte Implementierung an Hand umfassender Experimente. Weitere Experimente belegen die theoretische Laufzeitanalyse und vergleichen unsere Implementation mit dem kommerziellen CAD kernel ACIS. ACIS is meistens bis zu sechs mal schneller, aber es gibt auch Beispiele bei denen ACIS scheitert. Nef-Polyeder können bei einer Vielzahl von Anwendungen eingesetzt werden. Wir präsentieren einfache Implementationen zweier Anwendungen - von der visuellen Hülle und von der Minkowski-Summe zwei abgeschlossener Nef-Polyeder

Algorithms for meshing smooth surfaces and their volumes

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Skeleton Structures and Origami Design

In this dissertation we study problems related to polygonal skeleton structures that have applications to computational origami. The two main structures studied are the straight skeleton of a simple polygon (and its generalizations to planar straight line graphs) and the universal molecule of a Lang polygon. This work builds on results completed jointly with my advisor Ileana Streinu. Skeleton structures are used in many computational geometry algorithms. Examples include the medial axis, which has applications including shape analysis, optical character recognition, and surface reconstruction; and the Voronoi diagram, which has a wide array of applications including geographic information systems (GIS), point location data structures, motion planning, etc. The straight skeleton, studied in this work, has applications in origami design, polygon interpolation, biomedical imaging, and terrain modeling, to name just a few. Though the straight skeleton has been well studied in the computational geometry literature for over 20 years, there still exists a significant gap between the fastest algorithms for constructing it and the known lower bounds. One contribution of this thesis is an efficient algorithm for computing the straight skeleton of a polygon, polygon with holes, or a planar straight-line graph given a secondary structure called the induced motorcycle graph. The universal molecule is a generalization of the straight skeleton to certain convex polygons that have a particular relationship to a metric tree. It is used in Robert Lang\u27s seminal TreeMaker method for origami design. Informally, the universal molecule is a subdivision of a polygon (or polygonal sheet of paper) that allows the polygon to be ``folded\u27\u27 into a particular 3D shape with certain tree-like properties. One open problem is whether the universal molecule can be rigidly folded: given the initial flat state and a particular desired final ``folded\u27\u27 state, is there a continuous motion between the two states that maintains the faces of the subdivision as rigid panels? A partial characterization is known: for a certain measure zero class of universal molecules there always exists such a folding motion. Another open problem is to remove the restriction of the universal molecule to convex polygons. This is of practical importance since the TreeMaker method sometimes fails to produce an output on valid input due the convexity restriction and extending the universal molecule to non-convex polygons would allow TreeMaker to work on all valid inputs. One further interesting problem is the development of faster algorithms for computing the universal molecule. In this thesis we make the following contributions to the study of the universal molecule. We first characterize the tree-like family of surfaces that are foldable from universal molecules. In order to do this we define a new family of surfaces we call Lang surfaces and prove that a restricted class of these surfaces are equivalent to the universal molecules. Next, we develop and compare efficient implementations for computing the universal molecule. Then, by investigating properties of broader classes of Lang surfaces, we arrive at a generalization of the universal molecule from convex polygons in the plane to non-convex polygons in arbitrary flat surfaces. This is of both practical and theoretical interest. The practical interest is that this work removes the case from Lang\u27s TreeMaker method that causes TreeMaker to fail to produce output in the presence of non-convex polygons. The theoretical interest comes from the fact that our generalization encompasses more than just those surfaces that can be cut out of a sheet of paper, and pertains to polygons that cannot be lied flat in the plane without self-intersections. Finally, we identify a large class of universal molecules that are not foldable by rigid folding motions. This makes progress towards a complete characterization of the foldability of the universal molecule