3,092 research outputs found
Querying for the Largest Empty Geometric Object in a Desired Location
We study new types of geometric query problems defined as follows: given a
geometric set , preprocess it such that given a query point , the
location of the largest circle that does not contain any member of , but
contains can be reported efficiently. The geometric sets we consider for
are boundaries of convex and simple polygons, and point sets. While we
primarily focus on circles as the desired shape, we also briefly discuss empty
rectangles in the context of point sets.Comment: This version is a significant update of our earlier submission
arXiv:1004.0558v1. Apart from new variants studied in Sections 3 and 4, the
results have been improved in Section 5.Please note that the change in title
and abstract indicate that we have expanded the scope of the problems we
stud
Deconstructing Approximate Offsets
We consider the offset-deconstruction problem: Given a polygonal shape Q with
n vertices, can it be expressed, up to a tolerance \eps in Hausdorff distance,
as the Minkowski sum of another polygonal shape P with a disk of fixed radius?
If it does, we also seek a preferably simple-looking solution P; then, P's
offset constitutes an accurate, vertex-reduced, and smoothened approximation of
Q. We give an O(n log n)-time exact decision algorithm that handles any
polygonal shape, assuming the real-RAM model of computation. A variant of the
algorithm, which we have implemented using CGAL, is based on rational
arithmetic and answers the same deconstruction problem up to an uncertainty
parameter \delta; its running time additionally depends on \delta. If the input
shape is found to be approximable, this algorithm also computes an approximate
solution for the problem. It also allows us to solve parameter-optimization
problems induced by the offset-deconstruction problem. For convex shapes, the
complexity of the exact decision algorithm drops to O(n), which is also the
time required to compute a solution P with at most one more vertex than a
vertex-minimal one.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures, previous version accepted at SoCG 2011,
submitted to DC
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
Searchable Sky Coverage of Astronomical Observations: Footprints and Exposures
Sky coverage is one of the most important pieces of information about
astronomical observations. We discuss possible representations, and present
algorithms to create and manipulate shapes consisting of generalized spherical
polygons with arbitrary complexity and size on the celestial sphere. This shape
specification integrates well with our Hierarchical Triangular Mesh indexing
toolbox, whose performance and capabilities are enhanced by the advanced
features presented here. Our portable implementation of the relevant spherical
geometry routines comes with wrapper functions for database queries, which are
currently being used within several scientific catalog archives including the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the Hubble Legacy
Archive projects as well as the Footprint Service of the Virtual Observatory.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, submitted to PAS
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