Visibility graphs
BY:
HAARIKA KONERU
Overview
Visibility graphs
Examples
Reduced visibility graph
Applications
Visibility graphs for path planning
Visibility Graphs :
Introduction
Visibility: We say that two points p and q are mutually visible if the open line segment
joining them does not intersect the interior of any obstacle.
• Visibility graph is a graph of inter
visible locations, typically for a set of
points and obstacles in the Euclidean
plane.
• Each node in the graph represents a
point location, and each edge represents
a visible connection between them
• That is, if the line segment connecting
two locations does not pass through any
obstacle, an edge is drawn between them
in the graph.
Why Visibility Graphs?
Problem - We are given a set of n disjoint polygonal
obstacles in the plane, and two points s and t that lie outside
of the obstacles. The problem is to determine the shortest
path from s to t that avoids the interiors of the obstacles.
Claim - The shortest path between any two points that
avoids a set of polygonal obstacles is a polygonal curve, whose
vertices are either vertices of the obstacles or the points s
and t.
Visibility Graph
Construction
•To construct the visibility graph we must determine which
vertices are visible from a vertex v , for every v.
•Naïve algorithm*:
Input – a set of vertices ni , whose edges do not intersect
(N in number)
1. Join the given vertex ng to all other vertices ni . (total
of N-1)
2. Check if the line segment ngni intersects the given
edges(total of N)
3. Repeat the procedure for every vertex (total of N)
Altogether the algorithm is O(n3)
Visibility Graph: Some
Examples
Visibility Graph: Some
Examples
Visibility Graph: Some
Examples
Visibility Graph: Some
Examples
Reduced Visibility Graph
The standard visibility graph has many needless edges which
are not going to be used in any case.
These are the ones that are going towards to the obstacles
The lines that are useful for path planning are the ones going
around the obstacles, or passing through the vertices that are
extremes around the obstacles.
Eliminate concave obstacle vertices.
If we apply this property to the graph shown earlier, we obtain the reduced
visibility graph.
Although shortest path doesn't change, the time it
required to find considerably decreases.
For instance there are 58 edges in a graph whereas in
reduced graph case there are 36 edges which is 38% less
than the standard graph.
In the earlier case the shortest path finding requires
0.074 seconds, but it is 0.044 in reduced graph case. This
is 40% faster than standard graph case.
Reduced Visibility Graph:
Example
Reduced Visibility Graph:
Example
Applications
Robot path planning
Placement of radio antennas
Complex network theory
Regional planning
Military mission planning
Visibility graphs for
Robot Path Planning
Visibility graphs are used in robot path planning which
computes collision free paths of virtually any type moving
among stationary obstacles.
Robot path planning steps
Construction of visibility graph.
Roadmap approach
Shortest path between edges.
Dijkstra’s algorithm finds shortest path between two nodes of n nodes and k
arcs graph in O(nlogn + k) time.
void ShortestPath ( S , pstart , pgoal ) {
Gvis VisibilityGraph ( S p start , pgoal ) ;
Assign weight to each e u, v Gvis ; // Euclidean length uv
Find shortest path from pstart to pgoal with Dijkstra's algorithm ;
}
References
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visibility_graph
2. http://cs.smith.edu/~streinu/Teaching/Courses/274/Spring98/Proje
cts/Philip/fp/visibility.htm
3. http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~pless/546/lectures/l22.html
4. Choset, Howie M. Principles of robot motion: theory, algorithms, and
implementation. MIT press, 2005.
