On tangents to quadric surfaces

We study the variety of common tangents for up to four quadric surfaces in projective three-space, with particular regard to configurations of four quadrics admitting a continuum of common tangents. We formulate geometrical conditions in the projective space defined by all complex quadric surfaces which express the fact that several quadrics are tangent along a curve to one and the same quadric of rank at least three, and called, for intuitive reasons: a basket. Lines in any ruling of the latter will be common tangents. These considerations are then restricted to spheres in Euclidean three-space, and result in a complete answer to the question over the reals: ``When do four spheres allow infinitely many common tangents?''.Comment: 50 page

An Upper Bound on the Average Size of Silhouettes

It is a widely observed phenomenon in computer graphics that the size of the silhouette of a polyhedron is much smaller than the size of the whole polyhedron. This paper provides, for the first time, theoretical evidence supporting this for a large class of objects, namely for polyhedra that approximate surfaces in some reasonable way; the surfaces may be non-convex and non-differentiable and they may have boundaries. We prove that such polyhedra have silhouettes of expected size $O(\sqrt{n})$ where the average is taken over all points of view and n is the complexity of the polyhedron

Motion Planning of Legged Robots

We study the problem of computing the free space F of a simple legged robot called the spider robot. The body of this robot is a single point and the legs are attached to the body. The robot is subject to two constraints: each leg has a maximal extension R (accessibility constraint) and the body of the robot must lie above the convex hull of its feet (stability constraint). Moreover, the robot can only put its feet on some regions, called the foothold regions. The free space F is the set of positions of the body of the robot such that there exists a set of accessible footholds for which the robot is stable. We present an efficient algorithm that computes F in O(n2 log n) time using O(n2 alpha(n)) space for n discrete point footholds where alpha(n) is an extremely slowly growing function (alpha(n) <= 3 for any practical value of n). We also present an algorithm for computing F when the foothold regions are pairwise disjoint polygons with n edges in total. This algorithm computes F in O(n2 alpha8(n) log n) time using O(n2 alpha8(n)) space (alpha8(n) is also an extremely slowly growing function). These results are close to optimal since Omega(n2) is a lower bound for the size of F.Comment: 29 pages, 22 figures, prelininar results presented at WAFR94 and IEEE Robotics & Automation 9

Analysis of Farthest Point Sampling for Approximating Geodesics in a Graph

A standard way to approximate the distance between any two vertices $p$ and $q$ on a mesh is to compute, in the associated graph, a shortest path from $p$ to $q$ that goes through one of $k$ sources, which are well-chosen vertices. Precomputing the distance between each of the $k$ sources to all vertices of the graph yields an efficient computation of approximate distances between any two vertices. One standard method for choosing $k$ sources, which has been used extensively and successfully for isometry-invariant surface processing, is the so-called Farthest Point Sampling (FPS), which starts with a random vertex as the first source, and iteratively selects the farthest vertex from the already selected sources. In this paper, we analyze the stretch factor $\mathcal{F}_{FPS}$ of approximate geodesics computed using FPS, which is the maximum, over all pairs of distinct vertices, of their approximated distance over their geodesic distance in the graph. We show that $\mathcal{F}_{FPS}$ can be bounded in terms of the minimal value $\mathcal{F}^*$ of the stretch factor obtained using an optimal placement of $k$ sources as $\mathcal{F}_{FPS}\leq 2 r_e^2 \mathcal{F}^*+ 2 r_e^2 + 8 r_e + 1$, where $r_e$ is the ratio of the lengths of the longest and the shortest edges of the graph. This provides some evidence explaining why farthest point sampling has been used successfully for isometry-invariant shape processing. Furthermore, we show that it is NP-complete to find $k$ sources that minimize the stretch factor.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Improved algorithm for computing separating linear forms for bivariate systems

We address the problem of computing a linear separating form of a system of two bivariate polynomials with integer coefficients, that is a linear combination of the variables that takes different values when evaluated at the distinct solutions of the system. The computation of such linear forms is at the core of most algorithms that solve algebraic systems by computing rational parameterizations of the solutions and this is the bottleneck of these algorithms in terms of worst-case bit complexity. We present for this problem a new algorithm of worst-case bit complexity \sOB(d^7+d^6\tau) where $d$ and $\tau$ denote respectively the maximum degree and bitsize of the input (and where \sO refers to the complexity where polylogarithmic factors are omitted and $O_B$ refers to the bit complexity). This algorithm simplifies and decreases by a factor $d$ the worst-case bit complexity presented for this problem by Bouzidi et al. \cite{bouzidiJSC2014a}. This algorithm also yields, for this problem, a probabilistic Las-Vegas algorithm of expected bit complexity \sOB(d^5+d^4\tau).Comment: ISSAC - 39th International Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation (2014

Near-Optimal Parameterization of the Intersection of Quadrics: III. Parameterizing Singular Intersections

In Part II [3] of this paper, we have shown, using a classification of pencils of quadrics over the reals, how to determine quickly and efficiently the real type of the intersection of two given quadrics. For each real type of intersection, we design, in this third part, an algorithm for computing a near-optimal parameterization. We also give here examples covering all the possible situations, in terms of both the real type of intersection and the number and depth of square roots appearing in the coefficients

On the expected size of the 2d visibility complex

We study the expected size of the 2D visibility complex of randomly distributed objects in the plane. We prove that the asymptotic expected number of free bitangents (which correspond to 0-faces of the visibility complex) among unit discs (or polygons of bounded aspect ratio and similar size) is linear and exhibit bounds in terms of the density of the objects. We also make an experimental assessment of the size of the visibility complex for disjoint random unit discs. We provide experimental estimates of the onset of the linear behavior and of the asymptotic slope and y-intercept of the number of free bitangents in terms of the density of discs. Finally, we analyze the quality of our estimates in terms of the density of discs.

Near-Optimal Parameterization of the Intersection of Quadrics: Theory and Implementation

Colloque avec actes et comité de lecture. internationale.International audienceWe present an algorithm that computes an exact parametric form of the intersection of two real quadrics in projective three-space given by implicit equations with rational coefficients. This algorithm represents the first complete and robust solution to what is perhaps the most basic problem of solid modeling by implicit curved surfaces