Polyhedral combinatorics has been a topic of interest in modern day’s computational geometry. The founding of Steinitz’s Theorem in 1922 revealed consequential relations between graph theory and polyhedral combinatorics. It allows us to better investigate on the topology of convex polyhedrons. In this paper, we proposed an algorithm that generates a unique sequence of points, using the vertices of a triangulated polyhedron, pre-determined by the selection of the starting 3 vertices in the sequence. Following that, we discover an interesting relation between the sequence and the volume of the polyhedron itself, in which we presented in the form of a sufficient condition. To further investigate which polyhedrons generate sequences that satisfy the sufficient condition, we study the problem in the context of graph theory, that is, the explorer walk (corresponding to the sequence of vertices) in maximal planar graphs (skeletons of triangulated convex polyhedrons). With that, we uncovered a family of maximal planar graphs, called the explorer graphs, which exhibits volumetric properties in the polyhedrons constructed from them, in regard to the explorer walk. In this paper, we also introduce generalized methods of constructing explorer graphs of higher order from explorer graphs of lower order, demonstrating the prevalence of explorer graphs. As the edges of a maximal planar graph is of great importance in tracing an explorer walk, we investigate on the line graph of maximal planar graphs, and re-establish a better definition of explorer graphs. Lastly, our paper covers the edge contraction of explorer graphs, which allows us to solve the volume of polyhedrons constructed from non-explorer graphs. For this, we presented a possible bound for the minimum number of edge contractions a non-explorer graph requires from an explorer graph. This will generalize the proposed method of finding volumes to any triangulated convex polyhedron.

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For the purpose of isogeometric analysis, one of the most common ways is to construct structured hexahedral meshes, which have regular tensor product structure, and fit them by volumetric T-Splines. This theoretic work proposes a novel surface quadrilateral meshing method, colorable quad-mesh, which leads to the structured hexahedral mesh of the enclosed volume for high genus surfaces. The work proves the equivalence relations among colorable quad-meshes, finite measured foliations and Strebel differentials on surfaces. This trinity theorem lays down the theoretic foundation for quadrilateral/hexahedral mesh generation, and leads to practical, automatic algorithms. The work proposes the following algorithm: the user inputs a set of disjoint, simple loops on a high genus surface, and specifies a height parameter for each loop; a unique Strebel differential is computed with the combinatorial type and the heights prescribed by the user’s input; the Strebel differential assigns a flat metric on the surface and decomposes the surface into cylinders; a colorable quad-mesh is generated by splitting each cylinder into two quadrilaterals, followed by subdivision; the surface cylindrical decomposition is extended inward to produce a solid cylindrical decomposition of the volume; the hexadhedral meshing is generated for each volumetric cylinder and then glued together to form a globally consistent hex-mesh. The method is rigorous, geometric, automatic and conformal to the geometry. This work focuses on the theoretic aspects of the framework, the algorithmic details and practical evaluations will be given in the future expositions.

Cooperative dual-crane lifting is an important but challenging process involved in heavy and critical lifting tasks. This paper considers the path planning for the cooperative dual-crane lifting. It aims to automatically generate optimal dual-crane lifting paths under multiple constraints, i.e., collision avoidance, coordination between the two cranes, and balance of the lifting target. Previous works often used oversimplified models for the dual-crane lifting system, the lifting environment, and the motion of the lifting target. They were thus limited to simple lifting cases and might even lead to unsafe paths in some cases. We develop a novel path planner for dual-crane lifting that can quickly produce optimized paths in complex 3-D environments. The planner has fully considered the kinematic structure of the lifting system. Therefore, it is able to robustly handle the nonlinear movement of the suspended target during lifting. The effectiveness and efficiency of the planner are enabled by three novel aspects: 1) a comprehensive and computationally efficient mathematical modeling of the lifting system; 2) a new multiobjective parallel genetic algorithm designed to solve the path planning problem; and 3) a new efficient approach to perform continuous collision detection for the dual-crane lifting target. The planner has been tested in complex industrial environments. The results show that the planner can generate dual-crane lifting paths that are easy for conductions and optimized in terms of costs for complex environments. Comparisons with two previous methods demonstrate the advantages of the planner, including safer paths, higher success rates, and the ability to handle general lifting cases.