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

On Ray Shooting for Triangles in 3-Space and Related Problems

We consider several problems that involve lines in three dimensions, and present improved algorithms for solving them. The problems include (i) ray shooting amid triangles in $R^3$, (ii) reporting intersections between query lines (segments, or rays) and input triangles, as well as approximately counting the number of such intersections, (iii) computing the intersection of two nonconvex polyhedra, (iv) detecting, counting, or reporting intersections in a set of lines in $R^3$, and (v) output-sensitive construction of an arrangement of triangles in three dimensions. Our approach is based on the polynomial partitioning technique. For example, our ray-shooting algorithm processes a set of $n$ triangles in $R^3$ into a data structure for answering ray shooting queries amid the given triangles, which uses $O(n^{3/2+\varepsilon})$ storage and preprocessing, and answers a query in $O(n^{1/2+\varepsilon})$ time, for any $\varepsilon>0$. This is a significant improvement over known results, obtained more than 25 years ago, in which, with this amount of storage, the query time bound is roughly $n^{5/8}$. The algorithms for the other problems have similar performance bounds, with similar improvements over previous results. We also derive a nontrivial improved tradeoff between storage and query time. Using it, we obtain algorithms that answer $m$ queries on $n$ objects in $$\max \left\{ O(m^{2/3}n^{5/6+\varepsilon} + n^{1+\varepsilon}),\; O(m^{5/6+\varepsilon}n^{2/3} + m^{1+\varepsilon}) \right\}$$ time, for any $\varepsilon>0$, again an improvement over the earlier bounds.Comment: 33 pages, 7 figure

Collision-free path planning

Motion planning is an important challenge in robotics research. Efficient generation of collision-free motion is a fundamental capability necessary for autonomous robots;In this dissertation, a fast and practical algorithm for moving a convex polygonal robot among a set of polygonal obstacles with translations and rotations is presented. The running time is O(c((n + k)N + nlogn)), where c is a parameter controlling the precision of the results, n is the total number of obstacle vertices, k is the number of intersections of configuration space obstacles, and N is the number of obstacles, decomposed into convex objects. This dissertation exploits a simple 3D passage-network to incorporate robot rotations as an alternative to complex cell decomposition techniques or building passage networks on approximated 3D C-space obstacles;A common approach in path planning is to compute the Minkowski difference of a polygonal robot model with the polygonal obstacle environment. However such a configuration space is valid only for a single robot orientation. In this research, multiple configuration spaces are computed between the obstacle environment and the robot at successive angular orientations spanning [pi] . Although the obstacles do not intersect, each configuration space may contain intersecting configuration space obstacles (C-space obstacles). For each configuration space, the algorithm finds the contour of the intersected C-space obstacles and the associated passage network by slabbing the collision-free space. The individual configuration spaces are then related to one another by a heuristic called proper links that exploit spatial coherence. Thus, each level is connected to the adjacent levels by proper links to construct a 3D network. Dijkstra\u27s algorithm is used to search for the shortest path in the 3D network. Finally, the path is projected onto the plane to show the final locus of the path

Sets of lines and cutting out polyhedral objects

AbstractWe study algorithmic questions related to cutting polyhedral shapes with a hot wire cutter. Such cutters are popular manufacturing tools for cutting expanded polystyrene (styrofoam) with a thin, moving heated wire. In particular, we study the question of polyhedral-wise continuity: Can a given object be cut out without disconnecting and then reattaching the wire? In an abstract setting this question translates to properties of sets of lines and segments and therefore becomes suitable for computational geometry techniques. On the combinatorial and algorithmic levels the results and methods are related to two problems: (1) given a set F={f1,…,fk} of polygons and a polygon f, decide if there is a subset of lines in the set of lines not stabbing F that cover f; (2) construct the connectivity graph for free movements of lines that maintain contact with the polyhedral shape. Problem (1) is solved with the dual projection and arrangements of convex and concave x-monotone curves. Problem (2) can be solved with a combination of the skewed projections [6] and hyperbola arrangements proposed by McKenna and O'Rourke [11]. We provide an O(n5) algorithm for constructing a cutting path, if it exists. The complexity of the algorithm is determined by the O(n4) size of the connectivity graph and the cost of solving (2)

Abstracts for the twentyfirst European workshop on Computational geometry, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, The Netherlands, March 9-11, 2005

This volume contains abstracts of the papers presented at the 21st European Workshop on Computational Geometry, held at TU Eindhoven (the Netherlands) on March 9–11, 2005. There were 53 papers presented at the Workshop, covering a wide range of topics. This record number shows that the field of computational geometry is very much alive in Europe. We wish to thank all the authors who submitted papers and presented their work at the workshop. We believe that this has lead to a collection of very interesting abstracts that are both enjoyable and informative for the reader. Finally, we are grateful to TU Eindhoven for their support in organizing the workshop and to the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for sponsoring the workshop

Large bichromatic point sets admit empty monochromatic 4-gons

We consider a variation of a problem stated by Erd˝os and Szekeres in 1935 about the existence of a number fES(k) such that any set S of at least fES(k) points in general position in the plane has a subset of k points that are the vertices of a convex k-gon. In our setting the points of S are colored, and we say that a (not necessarily convex) spanned polygon is monochromatic if all its vertices have the same color. Moreover, a polygon is called empty if it does not contain any points of S in its interior. We show that any bichromatic set of n ≥ 5044 points in R2 in general position determines at least one empty, monochromatic quadrilateral (and thus linearly many).Postprint (published version

Collection of abstracts of the 24th European Workshop on Computational Geometry

International audienceThe 24th European Workshop on Computational Geomety (EuroCG'08) was held at INRIA Nancy - Grand Est & LORIA on March 18-20, 2008. The present collection of abstracts contains the 63 scientific contributions as well as three invited talks presented at the workshop