409 research outputs found
Exact Minkowski sums of polyhedra and exact and efficient decomposition of polyhedra in convex pieces
We present the first exact and robust implementation of the 3D Minkowski sum of two non-convex polyhedra. Our implementation decomposes the two polyhedra into convex pieces, performs pairwise Minkowski sums on the convex pieces, and constructs their union. We achieve exactness and the handling of all degeneracies by building upon 3D Nef polyhedra as provided by Cgal. The implementation also supports open and closed polyhedra. This allows the handling of degenerate scenarios like the tight passage problem in robot motion planning. The bottleneck of our approach is the union step. We address efficiency by optimizing this step by two means: we implement an efficient decomposition that yields a small amount of convex pieces, and develop, test and optimize multiple strategies for uniting the partial sums by consecutive binary union operations. The decomposition that we implemented as part of the Minkowski sum is interesting in its own right. It is the first robust implementation of a decomposition of polyhedra into convex pieces that yields at most O(r 2) pieces, where r is the number of edges whose adjacent facets comprise an angle of more than 180 degrees with respect to the interior of the polyhedron
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
On the Power of Manifold Samples in Exploring Configuration Spaces and the Dimensionality of Narrow Passages
We extend our study of Motion Planning via Manifold Samples (MMS), a general
algorithmic framework that combines geometric methods for the exact and
complete analysis of low-dimensional configuration spaces with sampling-based
approaches that are appropriate for higher dimensions. The framework explores
the configuration space by taking samples that are entire low-dimensional
manifolds of the configuration space capturing its connectivity much better
than isolated point samples. The contributions of this paper are as follows:
(i) We present a recursive application of MMS in a six-dimensional
configuration space, enabling the coordination of two polygonal robots
translating and rotating amidst polygonal obstacles. In the adduced experiments
for the more demanding test cases MMS clearly outperforms PRM, with over
20-fold speedup in a coordination-tight setting. (ii) A probabilistic
completeness proof for the most prevalent case, namely MMS with samples that
are affine subspaces. (iii) A closer examination of the test cases reveals that
MMS has, in comparison to standard sampling-based algorithms, a significant
advantage in scenarios containing high-dimensional narrow passages. This
provokes a novel characterization of narrow passages which attempts to capture
their dimensionality, an attribute that had been (to a large extent) unattended
in previous definitions.Comment: 20 page
Motion Planning via Manifold Samples
We present a general and modular algorithmic framework for path planning of
robots. Our framework combines geometric methods for exact and complete
analysis of low-dimensional configuration spaces, together with practical,
considerably simpler sampling-based approaches that are appropriate for higher
dimensions. In order to facilitate the transfer of advanced geometric
algorithms into practical use, we suggest taking samples that are entire
low-dimensional manifolds of the configuration space that capture the
connectivity of the configuration space much better than isolated point
samples. Geometric algorithms for analysis of low-dimensional manifolds then
provide powerful primitive operations. The modular design of the framework
enables independent optimization of each modular component. Indeed, we have
developed, implemented and optimized a primitive operation for complete and
exact combinatorial analysis of a certain set of manifolds, using arrangements
of curves of rational functions and concepts of generic programming. This in
turn enabled us to implement our framework for the concrete case of a polygonal
robot translating and rotating amidst polygonal obstacles. We demonstrate that
the integration of several carefully engineered components leads to significant
speedup over the popular PRM sampling-based algorithm, which represents the
more simplistic approach that is prevalent in practice. We foresee possible
extensions of our framework to solving high-dimensional problems beyond motion
planning.Comment: 18 page
Separation-Sensitive Collision Detection for Convex Objects
We develop a class of new kinetic data structures for collision detection
between moving convex polytopes; the performance of these structures is
sensitive to the separation of the polytopes during their motion. For two
convex polygons in the plane, let be the maximum diameter of the polygons,
and let be the minimum distance between them during their motion. Our
separation certificate changes times when the relative motion of
the two polygons is a translation along a straight line or convex curve,
for translation along an algebraic trajectory, and for
algebraic rigid motion (translation and rotation). Each certificate update is
performed in time. Variants of these data structures are also
shown that exhibit \emph{hysteresis}---after a separation certificate fails,
the new certificate cannot fail again until the objects have moved by some
constant fraction of their current separation. We can then bound the number of
events by the combinatorial size of a certain cover of the motion path by
balls.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures; to appear in Proc. 10th Annual ACM-SIAM
Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, 1999; see also
http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/jeffe/pubs/kollide.html ; v2 replaces submission
with camera-ready versio
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