A symbolic approach to polyhedral scene analysis by parametric calotte propagation

Polyhedral scene analysis studies whether a 2D line drawing of a 3D polyhedron is realizable in the space, and if so, parameterizing the space of all possible realizations. For generic 2D data, symbolic computation with Grassmann-Cayley algebra is needed in the analysis. In this paper, we propose a method called parametric calotte propagation to solve the realization and parameterization problems for general polyhedral scenes at the same time. In algebraic manipulation, parametric propagation is more efficient than elimination. In application, it can lead to linear construction sequences for non-spherical polyhedra whose resolvable sequences do not exist.