Polygon Decomposition for Efficient Construction of Minkowski Sums

Several algorithms for computing the Minkowski sum of two polygons in the plane begin by decomposing each polygon into convex subpolygons. We examine different methods for decomposing polygons by their suitability for efficient construction of Minkowski sums. We study and experiment with various well-known decompositions as well as with several new decomposition schemes. We report on our experiments with various decompositions and different input polygons. Among our findings are that in general: (i) triangulations are too costly, (ii) what constitutes a good decomposition for one of the input polygons depends on the other input polygon

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: ESA
• Authors: Pankaj K. Agarwal, Eyal Flato, Dan Halperin
• Keywords: Algorithms, Decomposition, ESA 2000, Input Polygon, Polygons