2,911 research outputs found
Polygon Exploration with Time-Discrete Vision
With the advent of autonomous robots with two- and three-dimensional scanning
capabilities, classical visibility-based exploration methods from computational
geometry have gained in practical importance. However, real-life laser scanning
of useful accuracy does not allow the robot to scan continuously while in
motion; instead, it has to stop each time it surveys its environment. This
requirement was studied by Fekete, Klein and Nuechter for the subproblem of
looking around a corner, but until now has not been considered in an online
setting for whole polygonal regions.
We give the first algorithmic results for this important algorithmic problem
that combines stationary art gallery-type aspects with watchman-type issues in
an online scenario: We demonstrate that even for orthoconvex polygons, a
competitive strategy can be achieved only for limited aspect ratio A (the ratio
of the maximum and minimum edge length of the polygon), i.e., for a given lower
bound on the size of an edge; we give a matching upper bound by providing an
O(log A)-competitive strategy for simple rectilinear polygons, using the
assumption that each edge of the polygon has to be fully visible from some scan
point.Comment: 28 pages, 17 figures, 2 photographs, 3 tables, Latex. Updated some
details (title, figures and text) for final journal revision, including
explicit assumption of full edge visibilit
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Minimum Cell Connection in Line Segment Arrangements
We study the complexity of the following cell connection problems in segment arrangements. Given a set of straight-line segments in the plane and two points a and b in different cells of the induced arrangement:
[(i)] compute the minimum number of segments one needs to remove so that there is a path connecting a to b that does not intersect any of the remaining segments; [(ii)] compute the minimum number of segments one needs to remove so that the arrangement induced by the remaining segments has a single cell.
We show that problems (i) and (ii) are NP-hard and discuss some special, tractable cases. Most notably, we provide a near-linear-time algorithm for a variant of problem (i) where the path connecting a
to b must stay inside a given polygon P with a constant number of holes, the segments are contained in P, and the endpoints of the segments are on the boundary of P. The approach for this latter result uses homotopy of paths to group the segments into clusters with the property that either all segments in a cluster or none participate in an optimal solution
Online Exploration of Polygons with Holes
We study online strategies for autonomous mobile robots with vision to
explore unknown polygons with at most h holes. Our main contribution is an
(h+c_0)!-competitive strategy for such polygons under the assumption that each
hole is marked with a special color, where c_0 is a universal constant. The
strategy is based on a new hybrid approach. Furthermore, we give a new lower
bound construction for small h.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, submitted to WAOA 201
Fast, Autonomous Flight in GPS-Denied and Cluttered Environments
One of the most challenging tasks for a flying robot is to autonomously
navigate between target locations quickly and reliably while avoiding obstacles
in its path, and with little to no a-priori knowledge of the operating
environment. This challenge is addressed in the present paper. We describe the
system design and software architecture of our proposed solution, and showcase
how all the distinct components can be integrated to enable smooth robot
operation. We provide critical insight on hardware and software component
selection and development, and present results from extensive experimental
testing in real-world warehouse environments. Experimental testing reveals that
our proposed solution can deliver fast and robust aerial robot autonomous
navigation in cluttered, GPS-denied environments.Comment: Pre-peer reviewed version of the article accepted in Journal of Field
Robotic
The one-round Voronoi game replayed
We consider the one-round Voronoi game, where player one (``White'', called
``Wilma'') places a set of n points in a rectangular area of aspect ratio r
<=1, followed by the second player (``Black'', called ``Barney''), who places
the same number of points. Each player wins the fraction of the board closest
to one of his points, and the goal is to win more than half of the total area.
This problem has been studied by Cheong et al., who showed that for large
enough and r=1, Barney has a strategy that guarantees a fraction of 1/2+a,
for some small fixed a.
We resolve a number of open problems raised by that paper. In particular, we
give a precise characterization of the outcome of the game for optimal play: We
show that Barney has a winning strategy for n>2 and r>sqrt{2}/n, and for n=2
and r>sqrt{3}/2. Wilma wins in all remaining cases, i.e., for n>=3 and
r<=sqrt{2}/n, for n=2 and r<=sqrt{3}/2, and for n=1. We also discuss complexity
aspects of the game on more general boards, by proving that for a polygon with
holes, it is NP-hard to maximize the area Barney can win against a given set of
points by Wilma.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, Latex; revised for journal version, to appear in
Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications. Extended abstract version
appeared in Workshop on Algorithms and Data Structures, Springer Lecture
Notes in Computer Science, vol.2748, 2003, pp. 150-16
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