We present an algorithm for computing Minkowski sums among surfaces of revolution and surfaces of linear extrusion, generated by slope-monotone closed curves. The special structure of these simple surfaces allows the process of normal matching between two surfaces to be expressed as an explicit equation. Based on this insight, we also present an efficient algorithm for computing the distance be...

We show that for polytopes P1, P2, . . . , Pr ⊂ R, each having ni ≥ d + 1 vertices, the Minkowski sum P1 + P2 + · · · + Pr cannot achieve the maximum of ∏ i ni vertices if r ≥ d. This complements a recent result of Fukuda & Weibel (2006), who show that this is possible for up to d − 1 summands. The result is obtained by combining methods from discrete geometry (Gale transforms) and topological ...

It is known that in the Minkowski sum of r polytopes in dimension d, with r < d, the number of vertices of the sum can potentially be as high as the product of the number of vertices in each summand [2]. However, the number of vertices for sums of more polytopes was unknown so far. In this paper, we study sums of polytopes in general orientations, and show a linear relation between the number o...

We consider the problem of traveling the contour of the set of all points that are within distance 1 of a connected planar curve arrangement P, forming an embedding of the graph G. We show that if the overall length of P is L, there is a closed roundtrip that visits all points of the contour and has length no longer than 2L + 2n. This result carries over in a more general setting: if R is a com...