690 research outputs found
Approximating the Maximum Overlap of Polygons under Translation
Let and be two simple polygons in the plane of total complexity ,
each of which can be decomposed into at most convex parts. We present an
-approximation algorithm, for finding the translation of ,
which maximizes its area of overlap with . Our algorithm runs in
time, where is a constant that depends only on and .
This suggest that for polygons that are "close" to being convex, the problem
can be solved (approximately), in near linear time
Distance-Sensitive Planar Point Location
Let be a connected planar polygonal subdivision with edges
that we want to preprocess for point-location queries, and where we are given
the probability that the query point lies in a polygon of
. We show how to preprocess such that the query time
for a point~ depends on~ and, in addition, on the distance
from to the boundary of~---the further away from the boundary, the
faster the query. More precisely, we show that a point-location query can be
answered in time , where
is the shortest Euclidean distance of the query point~ to the
boundary of . Our structure uses space and
preprocessing time. It is based on a decomposition of the regions of
into convex quadrilaterals and triangles with the following
property: for any point , the quadrilateral or triangle
containing~ has area . For the special case where
is a subdivision of the unit square and
, we present a simpler solution that achieves a
query time of . The latter solution can be extended to
convex subdivisions in three dimensions
Evaluating the boundary and covering degree of planar Minkowski sums and other geometrical convolutions
AbstractAlgorithms are developed, based on topological principles, to evaluate the boundary and “internal structure” of the Minkowski sum of two planar curves. A graph isotopic to the envelope curve is constructed by computing its characteristic points. The edges of this graph are in one-to-one correspondence with a set of monotone envelope segments. A simple formula allows a degree to be assigned to each face defined by the graph, indicating the number of times its points are covered by the Minkowski sum. The boundary can then be identified with the set of edges that separate faces of zero and non-zero degree, and the boundary segments corresponding to these edges can be approximated to any desired geometrical accuracy. For applications that require only the Minkowski sum boundary, the algorithm minimizes geometrical computations on the “internal” envelope edges, that do not contribute to the final boundary. In other applications, this internal structure is of interest, and the algorithm provides comprehensive information on the covering degree for different regions within the Minkowski sum. Extensions of the algorithm to the computation of Minkowski sums in R3, and other forms of geometrical convolution, are briefly discussed
Discretization of Planar Geometric Cover Problems
We consider discretization of the 'geometric cover problem' in the plane:
Given a set of points in the plane and a compact planar object ,
find a minimum cardinality collection of planar translates of such that
the union of the translates in the collection contains all the points in .
We show that the geometric cover problem can be converted to a form of the
geometric set cover, which has a given finite-size collection of translates
rather than the infinite continuous solution space of the former. We propose a
reduced finite solution space that consists of distinct canonical translates
and present polynomial algorithms to find the reduce solution space for disks,
convex/non-convex polygons (including holes), and planar objects consisting of
finite Jordan curves.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure
Interlocking structure design and assembly
Many objects in our life are not manufactured as whole rigid pieces. Instead, smaller components are made to be later assembled into larger structures. Chairs are assembled from wooden pieces, cabins are made of logs, and buildings are constructed from bricks. These components are commonly designed by many iterations of human thinking. In this report, we will look at a few problems related to interlocking components design and assembly. Given an atomic object, how can we design a package that holds the object firmly without a gap in-between? How many pieces should the package be partitioned into? How can we assemble/extract each piece? We will attack this problem by first looking at the lower bound on the number of pieces, then at the upper bound. Afterwards, we will propose a practical algorithm for designing these packages. We also explore a special kind of interlocking structure which has only one or a small number of movable pieces. For example, a burr puzzle. We will design a few blocks with joints whose combination can be assembled into almost any voxelized 3D model. Our blocks require very simple motions to be assembled, enabling robotic assembly. As proof of concept, we also develop a robot system to assemble the blocks. In some extreme conditions where construction components are small, controlling each component individually is impossible. We will discuss an option using global controls. These global controls can be from gravity or magnetic fields. We show that in some special cases where the small units form a rectangular matrix, rearrangement can be done in a small space following a technique similar to bubble sort algorithm
B\'ezier curves that are close to elastica
We study the problem of identifying those cubic B\'ezier curves that are
close in the L2 norm to planar elastic curves. The problem arises in design
situations where the manufacturing process produces elastic curves; these are
difficult to work with in a digital environment. We seek a sub-class of special
B\'ezier curves as a proxy. We identify an easily computable quantity, which we
call the lambda-residual, that accurately predicts a small L2 distance. We then
identify geometric criteria on the control polygon that guarantee that a
B\'ezier curve has lambda-residual below 0.4, which effectively implies that
the curve is within 1 percent of its arc-length to an elastic curve in the L2
norm. Finally we give two projection algorithms that take an input B\'ezier
curve and adjust its length and shape, whilst keeping the end-points and
end-tangent angles fixed, until it is close to an elastic curve.Comment: 13 pages, 15 figure
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