Computing Approximate Shortest Paths on Convex Polytopes1

The algorithms for computing a shortest path on a polyhedral surface are slow, complicated, and numerically unstable. We have developed and implemented a robust and efficient algorithm for computing approximate shortest paths on a convex polyhedral surface. Given a convex polyhedral surface P in R3, two points s, t ∈ P , and a parameter ε > 0, it computes a path between s and t on P whose length is at most (1 + ε) times the length of the shortest path between those points. It constructs in time O(n/√ε) a graph of size O(1/ε4), computes a shortest path on this graph, and projects the path onto the surface in O(n/ε) time, where n is the number of vertices of P . In the postprocessing step we have added a heuristic that considerably improves the quality of the resulting path.