Edge-Unfolding Medial Axis Polyhedra Joseph O’Rourke, Smith College
Unfolding Convex Polyhedra: Albrecht Dürer, 1425 Snub Cube
Unfolding Polyhedra zTwo types of unfoldings: yEdge unfoldings: Cut only along edges yGeneral unfoldings: Cut through faces too
Cube with truncated corner Overlap
General Unfoldings of Convex Polyhedra zTheorem: Every convex polyhedron has a general nonoverlapping unfolding ØSource unfolding [Sharir & Schorr ’86, Mitchell, Mount, Papadimitrou ’87] ØStar unfolding [Aronov & JOR ’92] [Poincare 1905?]
Shortest paths from x to all vertices [Xu, Kineva, JOR 1996, 2000]
Cut locus from x a.k.a., the ridge tree [SS86]
Source Unfolding: cut the cut locus
Quasigeodesic Source Unfolding z[IOV07]: Jin-ichi Ito, JOR, Costin Vîlcu, “Unfolding Convex Polyhedra via Quasigeodesics,” zConjecture: Cutting the cut locus of a simple, closed quasigeodesic (plus one additional cut) unfolds without overlap. zSpecial case: Medial Axis Polyhedra
Quasigeodesic Source Unfolding z[IOV07]: Jin-ichi Ito, JOR, Costin Vîlcu, “Unfolding Convex Polyhedra via Quasigeodesics,” zConjecture: Cutting the cut locus of a simple, closed quasigeodesic (plus one additional cut) unfolds without overlap. zSpecial case: Medial Axis Polyhedra point
Simple, Closed Quasigeodesic [Lysyanskaya, JOR 1996] Lyusternick-Schnirelmann Theorem: 3
A Medial Axis Polyhedron
Medial axis of a convex polygon
Medial axis = cut locus of ∂P
Medial Axis & M.A. Polyhedron
Example (in Mathematica) MAT.Polyhedra.nb
Main Theorem zUnfolding U. zClosed, convex region U *. yCould be unbounded. zM(P) = medial axis of P. zTheorem: yEach face f i of U nests inside a cell of M(U * ).
Medial Axis & M.A. Polyhedron
Unfolding: U *
Unfolding: Overlay with M(U * )
Partial Construction of Medial Axis
Eight Unfoldings
U n : U n-1
U n U n-1 Bisector rotation
Induction Base
Sidedness
Conclusion Theorem: yEach face f i of U nests inside a cell of M(U * ). Corollary: y U does not overlap. y Source unfolding of MAT polyhedron w.r.t. quasigeodesic base does not overlap. Questions: yDoes this hold for “convex caps”? yDoes this hold more generally? The End