7,733 research outputs found
Avoiding the Global Sort: A Faster Contour Tree Algorithm
We revisit the classical problem of computing the \emph{contour tree} of a
scalar field , where is a
triangulated simplicial mesh in . The contour tree is a
fundamental topological structure that tracks the evolution of level sets of
and has numerous applications in data analysis and visualization.
All existing algorithms begin with a global sort of at least all critical
values of , which can require (roughly) time. Existing
lower bounds show that there are pathological instances where this sort is
required. We present the first algorithm whose time complexity depends on the
contour tree structure, and avoids the global sort for non-pathological inputs.
If denotes the set of critical points in , the running time is
roughly , where is the depth of in
the contour tree. This matches all existing upper bounds, but is a significant
improvement when the contour tree is short and fat. Specifically, our approach
ensures that any comparison made is between nodes in the same descending path
in the contour tree, allowing us to argue strong optimality properties of our
algorithm.
Our algorithm requires several novel ideas: partitioning in
well-behaved portions, a local growing procedure to iteratively build contour
trees, and the use of heavy path decompositions for the time complexity
analysis
Maintaining Contour Trees of Dynamic Terrains
We consider maintaining the contour tree of a piecewise-linear
triangulation that is the graph of a time varying height function
. We carefully describe the
combinatorial change in that happen as varies over time and
how these changes relate to topological changes in . We present a
kinetic data structure that maintains the contour tree of over time. Our
data structure maintains certificates that fail only when for two
adjacent vertices and in , or when two saddle vertices lie
on the same contour of . A certificate failure is handled in
time. We also show how our data structure can be extended to
handle a set of general update operations on and how it can be
applied to maintain topological persistence pairs of time varying functions
Localization in Unstructured Environments: Towards Autonomous Robots in Forests with Delaunay Triangulation
Autonomous harvesting and transportation is a long-term goal of the forest
industry. One of the main challenges is the accurate localization of both
vehicles and trees in a forest. Forests are unstructured environments where it
is difficult to find a group of significant landmarks for current fast
feature-based place recognition algorithms. This paper proposes a novel
approach where local observations are matched to a general tree map using the
Delaunay triangularization as the representation format. Instead of point cloud
based matching methods, we utilize a topology-based method. First, tree trunk
positions are registered at a prior run done by a forest harvester. Second, the
resulting map is Delaunay triangularized. Third, a local submap of the
autonomous robot is registered, triangularized and matched using triangular
similarity maximization to estimate the position of the robot. We test our
method on a dataset accumulated from a forestry site at Lieksa, Finland. A
total length of 2100\,m of harvester path was recorded by an industrial
harvester with a 3D laser scanner and a geolocation unit fixed to the frame.
Our experiments show a 12\,cm s.t.d. in the location accuracy and with
real-time data processing for speeds not exceeding 0.5\,m/s. The accuracy and
speed limit is realistic during forest operations
Exploring multiple viewshed analysis using terrain features and optimisation techniques
The calculation of viewsheds is a routine operation in geographic information systems and is used in a wide range of applications. Many of these involve the siting of features, such as radio masts, which are part of a network and yet the selection of sites is normally done separately for each feature. The selection of a series of locations which collectively maximise the visual coverage of an area is a combinatorial problem and as such cannot be directly solved except for trivial cases. In this paper, two strategies for tackling this problem are explored. The first is to restrict the search to key topographic points in the landscape such as peaks, pits and passes. The second is to use heuristics which have been applied to other maximal coverage spatial problems such as location-allocation. The results show that the use of these two strategies results in a reduction of the computing time necessary by two orders of magnitude, but at the cost of a loss of 10% in the area viewed. Three different heuristics were used, of which Simulated Annealing produced the best results. However the improvement over a much simpler fast-descent swap heuristic was very slight, but at the cost of greatly increased running times. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Surface networks
© Copyright CASA, UCL. The desire to understand and exploit the structure of continuous surfaces is common to researchers in a range of disciplines. Few examples of the varied surfaces forming an integral part of modern subjects include terrain, population density, surface atmospheric pressure, physico-chemical surfaces, computer graphics, and metrological surfaces. The focus of the work here is a group of data structures called Surface Networks, which abstract 2-dimensional surfaces by storing only the most important (also called fundamental, critical or surface-specific) points and lines in the surfaces. Surface networks are intelligent and ânatural â data structures because they store a surface as a framework of âsurface â elements unlike the DEM or TIN data structures. This report presents an overview of the previous works and the ideas being developed by the authors of this report. The research on surface networks has fou
The GeoClaw software for depth-averaged flows with adaptive refinement
Many geophysical flow or wave propagation problems can be modeled with
two-dimensional depth-averaged equations, of which the shallow water equations
are the simplest example. We describe the GeoClaw software that has been
designed to solve problems of this nature, consisting of open source Fortran
programs together with Python tools for the user interface and flow
visualization. This software uses high-resolution shock-capturing finite volume
methods on logically rectangular grids, including latitude--longitude grids on
the sphere. Dry states are handled automatically to model inundation. The code
incorporates adaptive mesh refinement to allow the efficient solution of
large-scale geophysical problems. Examples are given illustrating its use for
modeling tsunamis, dam break problems, and storm surge. Documentation and
download information is available at www.clawpack.org/geoclawComment: 18 pages, 11 figures, Animations and source code for some examples at
http://www.clawpack.org/links/awr10 Significantly modified from original
posting to incorporate suggestions of referee
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