Computational geometry

We give a deterministic algorithm for triangulating a simple polygon in linear time. The basic strategy is to build a coarse approximation of a triangulation in a bottom-up phase and then use the information computed along the way to refine the triangulation in a top-down phase. The main tools used are the polygon-cutting theorem, which provides us with a balancing scheme, and the planar separator theorem, whose role is essential in the discovery of new diagonals. Only elementary data structures are required by the algorithm. In particular, no dynamic search trees, of our algorithm.

Triangulating a simple polygon in linear time

Computational geometry.

Origami describes rules for creating folded structures from patterns on a flat sheet, but does not prescribe how patterns can be designed to fit target shapes. Here, starting from the simplest periodic origami pattern that yields one-degree-of-freedom collapsible structures-we show that scale-independent elementary geometric constructions and constrained optimization algorithms can be used to determine spatially modulated patterns that yield approximations to given surfaces of constant or varying curvature. Paper models confirm the feasibility of our calculations. We also assess the difficulty of realizing these geometric structures by quantifying the energetic barrier that separates the metastable flat and folded states. Moreover, we characterize the trade-off between the accuracy to which the pattern conforms to the target surface, and the effort associated with creating finer folds. Our approach enables the tailoring of origami patterns to drape complex surfaces independent of absolute scale, as well as the quantification of the energetic and material cost of doing so.

Programming curvature using origami tessellations

Voting based extreme learning machine

Efficient Reconfiguration for Lattice-Based Modular Robots

Partial persistence is a general transformation that takes a data structure and allows queries to be executed on any past state of the structure. The cache-oblivious model is the leading model of a modern multi-level memory hierarchy. We present the first general transformation for making cache-oblivious model data structures partially persistent.

/pdf/cache-oblivious-persistence-3dv2h72cax.pdf

Cache-Oblivious Persistence

For a fixed integer k ≥ 0, a k-transmitter is an omnidirectional wireless transmitter with an infinite broadcast range that is able to penetrate up to k. "walls", represented as line segments in the plane. We develop lower and upper bounds for the number of k-transmitters that are necessary and sufficient to cover a given collection of line segments, polygonal chains and polygons.

/pdf/coverage-with-k-transmitters-in-the-presence-of-obstacles-14eajlmd4h.pdf

Coverage with k-transmitters in the presence of obstacles

An optimal binary search tree for an access sequence on elements is a static tree that minimizes the total search cost. Constructing perfectly optimal binary search trees is expensive so the most efficient algorithms construct almost optimal search trees. There exists a long literature of constructing almost optimal search trees dynamically, i.e., when the access pattern is not known in advance. All of these trees, e.g., splay trees and treaps, provide a multiplicative approximation to the optimal search cost.
In this paper we show how to maintain an almost optimal weighted binary search tree under access operations and insertions of new elements where the approximation is an additive constant. More technically, we maintain a tree in which the depth of the leaf holding an element e_i does not exceed min(log(W/w_i),log n)+O(1) where w_i is the number of times e_i was accessed and W is the total length of the access sequence.
Our techniques can also be used to encode a sequence of m symbols with a dynamic alphabetic code in O(m) time so that the encoding length is bounded by m(H+O(1)), where H is the entropy of the sequence. This is the first efficient algorithm for adaptive alphabetic coding that runs in constant time per symbol.

Dynamic Trees with Almost-Optimal Access Cost

Sorting is a primitive operation that is a building block for countless algorithms. As such, it is important to design sorting algorithms that approach peak performance on a range of hardware architectures. Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are particularly attractive architectures as they provides massive parallelism and computing power. However, the intricacies of their compute and memory hierarchies make designing GPU-efficient algorithms challenging. In this work we present GPU Multiway Mergesort (MMS), a new GPU-efficient multiway mergesort algorithm. MMS employs a new partitioning technique that exposes the parallelism needed by modern GPU architectures. To the best of our knowledge, MMS is the first sorting algorithm for the GPU that is asymptotically optimal in terms of global memory accesses and that is completely free of shared memory bank conflicts. 
We realize an initial implementation of MMS, evaluate its performance on three modern GPU architectures, and compare it to competitive implementations available in state-of-the-art GPU libraries. Despite these implementations being highly optimized, MMS compares favorably, achieving performance improvements for most random inputs. Furthermore, unlike MMS, state-of-the-art algorithms are susceptible to bank conflicts. We find that for certain inputs that cause these algorithms to incur large numbers of bank conflicts, MMS can achieve up to a 37.6% speedup over its fastest competitor. Overall, even though its current implementation is not fully optimized, due to its efficient use of the memory hierarchy, MMS outperforms the fastest comparison-based sorting implementations available to date.

John Iacono

Papers

Efficient Reconfiguration for Lattice-Based Modular Robots

Cache-Oblivious Persistence

Coverage with k-transmitters in the presence of obstacles

Dynamic Trees with Almost-Optimal Access Cost

An Efficient Multiway Mergesort for GPU Architectures