Optimal Mesh Algorithms for the Voronoi Diagram of Line Segments and Motion Planning in the Plane

The motion planning problem for an object with two degrees of freedom moving in the plane can be stated as follows: Given a set of polygonal obstacles in the plane, and a two-dimensional mobile object B with two degrees of freedom, determine if it is possible to move B from a start position to a nal position while avoiding the obstacles. If so, plan a path for such a motion. Techniques from computational geometry have been used to develop exact algorithms for this fundamental case of motion planning. In this paper we obtain optimal mesh implementations of two diierent methods for planning motion in the plane. We do this by rst presenting optimal mesh algorithms for some geometric problems that, in addition to being important substeps in motion planning, have numerous independent applications in computational geometry. In particular, we rst show that the Voronoi diagram of a set of n nonintersecting (except possibly at endpoints) line segments in the plane can be constructed in O(p n) time on a p n p n mesh, which is optimal for the mesh. Consequently, we obtain an optimal mesh implementation of the sequential motion planning algorithm described in 21]; in other words, given a disc B and a polygonal obstacle set of size n, we can plan a path (if it exists) for the motion of B from a start position to a nal position in O(p n) time on a mesh of size n. We also show that the shortest path motion between a start position and a nal position for a convex object B (of constant size) moving among convex polygonal obstacles of total size n can be found in O(n) time on an n n mesh, which is worst-case optimal.