A kinetic data structure (KDS) maintains an attribute of interest in a system of geometric objects undergoing continuous motion. In this paper we develop a conceptual framework for kinetic data structures, propose a number of criteria for the quality of such structures, and describe a number of fundamental techniques for their design. We illustrate these general concepts by presenting kinetic data structures for maintaining the convex hull and the closest pair of moving points in the plane; these structures behavewell according to the proposed quality criteria for KDSs.

We propose three indexing schemes for storing a set S of N points in the plane, each moving along a linear trajectory, so that any query of the following form can be answered quickly: Given a rectangle R and a real value t; report all K points of S that lie inside R at time t: We first present an indexing structure that, for any given constant e> 0; uses OðN=BÞ disk blocks and answers a query in OððN=BÞ 1=2þe þ K=BÞ I/Os, where B is the block size. It can also report all the points of S that lie inside R during a given time interval. A point can be inserted or deleted, or the trajectory of a point can be changed, in Oðlog 2 B NÞ I/Os. Next, we present a general approach that improves the query time if the queries arrive in chronological order, by allowing the index to evolve over time. We obtain a tradeoff between the query time and the number of times the index needs to be updated as the points move. We also describe an indexing scheme in which the number of I/Os required to answer a query depends monotonically on the difference between the query time stamp t and the current time. Finally, we develop an efficient indexing scheme to answer approximate

... In this paper we present a general framework for addressing such problems and the tools for designing and analyzing relevant algorithms, which we call kinetic data structures. We discuss kinetic data structures for a variety of fundamental geometric problems, such as the maintenance of convex hulls, Voronoi and Delaunay diagrams, closest pairs, and intersection and visibility problems. We also briefly address the issues that arise in implementing such structures robustly and efficiently. The resulting techniques satisfy three desirable properties: (1) they exploit the continuity of the motion of the objects to gain efficiency, (2) the number of events processed by the algorithms is close to the minimum necessary in the worst case, and (3) any object may change its `flight plan' at any moment with a low cost update to the simulation data structures. For computer applications dealing with motion in the physical world, kinetic data structures lead to simulation performance unattainable by other means. In addition, they raise fundamentally new combinatorial and algorithmic questions whose study may prove fruitful for other disciplines as well.

We review the recent progress in the design of efficient algorithms for various problems in geometric optimization. We present several techniques used to attack these problems, such as parametric searching, geometric alternatives to parametric searching, prune-and-search techniques for linear programming and related problems, and LPtype problems and their efficient solution. We then describe a variety of applications of these and other techniques to numerous problems in geometric optimization, including facility location, proximity problems, statistical estimators and metrology, placement and intersection of polygons and polyhedra, and ray shooting and other query-type problems.

The arrangement of a finite collection of geometric objects is the decomposition of the space into connected cells induced by them. We survey combinatorial and algorithmic properties of arrangements of arcs in the plane and of surface patches in higher dimensions. We present many applications of arrangements to problems in motion planning, visualization, range searching, molecular modeling, and geometric optimization. Some results involving planar arrangements of arcs have been presented in a companion chapter in this book, and are extended in this chapter to higher dimensions. Work by P.A. was supported by Army Research Office MURI grant DAAH04-96-1-0013, by a Sloan fellowship, by an NYI award, and by a grant from the U.S.-Israeli Binational Science Foundation. Work by M.S. was supported by NSF Grants CCR-91-22103 and CCR-93-11127, by a Max-Planck Research Award, and by grants from the U.S.-Israeli Binational Science Foundation, the Israel Science Fund administered by the Israeli Ac...

We consider the problem of bounding the complexity of the lower envelope of n surface patches in 3-space, all algebraic of constant maximum degree, and bounded by algebraic arcs of constant maximum degree, with the additional property that the interiors of any triple of these surfaces intersect in at most two points. We show that the number of vertices on the lower envelope of n such surface patches is O(n 2 \Delta 2 c p log n ), for some constant c depending on the shape and degree of the surface patches. We apply this result to obtain an upper bound on the combinatorial complexity of the `lower envelope' of the space of all rays in 3-space that lie above a given polyhedral terrain K with n edges. This envelope consists of all rays that touch the terrain (but otherwise lie above it). We show that the combinatorial complexity of this ray-envelope is O(n 3 \Delta 2 c p log n ) for some constant c; in particular, there are at most that many rays that pass above th...

We study the question of finding a deepest point in an arrangement of regions, and provide a fast algorithm for this problem using random sampling, showing it sufficient to solve this problem when the deepest point is shallow. This implies, among other results, a fast algorithm for solving linear programming with violations approximately. We also use this technique to approximate the disk covering the largest number of red points, while avoiding all the blue points, given two such sets in the plane. Using similar techniques imply that approximate range counting queries have roughly the same time

Let F be a collection of n bivariate algebraic functions of constant maximum degree. We show that the combinatorial complexity of the vertical decomposition of the k-level of the arrangement A(F) is O(k 3+" /(n=k)), for any " ? 0, where /(r) is the maximum complexity of the lower envelope of a subset of at most r functions of F . This bound is nearly optimal in the worst case, and implies the existence of shallow cuttings, in the sense of [51], of small size in arrangements of bivariate algebraic functions. We also present numerous applications of these results, including: (i) data structures for several generalized three-dimensional range searching problems; (ii) dynamic data structures for planar nearest and farthest neighbor searching under various fairly general distance functions; (iii) an improved (near-quadratic) algorithm for minimum-weight bipartite Euclidean matching in the plane; and (iv) efficient algorithms for certain geometric optimization problems in static...

We propose a fast algorithm for rendering general irregular grids. Our method uses a sweep-plane approach to accelerate ray casting, and can handle disconnected and nonconvex (even with holes) unstructured irregular grids with a rendering cost that decreases as the “disconnectedness” decreases. The algorithm is carefully tailored to exploit spatial coherence even if the image resolution differs substantially from the object space resolution. In this paper, we establish the practicality of our method through experimental results based on our implementation, and we also provide theoretical results, both lower and upper bounds, on the complexity of ray casting of irregular grids.

Motivated by a frequency assignment problem in cellular networks, we introduce and study a new coloring problem that we call Minimum Conflict-Free Coloring (Min-CF-Coloring). In its general form, the input of the Min-CF-coloring problem is a set system (X, S), where each S 2 S is a subset of X . The output is a coloring of the sets in S that satisfies the following constraint: for every x 2 X there exists a color i and a unique set S 2 S, such that x 2 S and (S) = i. The goal is to minimize the number of colors used by the coloring .