Points enclosed by a custom defined Hypercube - algorithm

I have a N-dimensional vector, X and 'n' equidistant points along each dimension and a parameter 'delta'. I need a way to find the total of n^N vectors enclosed by the Hypercube defined with the vector X at the center and each side of Hypercube being of size 2*delta.
For example:
Consider a case of N=3, so we have a Cube of size (2*delta) enclosing the point X.
------------\
|\--------|--\
| | X | |
----------- |
\ |_2*del___\|
Along each dimension I have 'n' points. So, I have a total of n^3 vectors around X. I need to find all the vectors. Is there any standard algorithm/method for the same? If you have done anything similar, please suggest.
If the problem is not clear, let me know.
This is what I was looking at: Considering one dimension, length of a side is 2*delta and I have n divisions. So, each sub-division is of size (2*delta/n). So I just move to the origin that is (x-delta) (since x is the mid point of the side) and obtain the 'n' points by {(x-delta) + 1*(2*delta/n),(x-delta) + 2*(2*delta/n)....+ (x-delta) + 1*(n*delta/n) } . I do this for all the N-dimensions and then take a permutation of the co-ordinates. That way I have all the points.
(I would like to close this)

If i understand your problem correctly, you have an axis-aligned hypercube centred around a point X, and you have subdivided the interior of this hypercube into a regular lattice where the lattice points and spacing are in the coordinate system of the hypercube. All you have to do is let X = 0, find the vectors to each of the lattice points, and then go back and translate them by X.
Edit: let me add an example
let x = (5,5,5), delta = 1 and n = 3
then, moving x to the origin, your lattice points are (-1, -1, -1), (0, -1, -1), (1, -1, -1) and so on for a total of 27. translating back, we have (4, 4, 4), (5, 4, 4), (6, 4, 4) and so on.

Ok, I didn't fully understand your question. There are total of 2^(N-1)*N "lines" about a point in an N-dimensional hypercube.
If you just want to create n points on lines which look like the axis, but translated at a distance of delta from the origin, here's some (poorly written, for clarity) MATLAB code:
n = 10;
delta = 10;
N = 3;
step = (2*delta)/(n-1);
P = zeros(n,N,N);
X = [20 30 25];
for line_dim = 1:N
for point = 1:n
for point_dim = 1:N
if(point_dim ~= line_dim)
P(point,point_dim,line_dim) = X(point_dim)-delta;
else
P(point,point_dim,line_dim) = X(point_dim)-delta+step*(point-1);
end
end
end
end
The code's for a cube, but it should work for any N. All I've done is:
Draw those n equidistant points on the axes.
Translate the axes by (X-delta)
Display:
% Display stuff
PP = reshape(permute(P,[1 3 2]),[n*N N]);
plot3(X(1),X(2),X(3),'r*',PP(:,1),PP(:,2),PP(:,3),'.')
axis([0 Inf 0 Inf 0 Inf]);
grid on;

Related

How to find the closest rotation

Consider points Y given in increasing order from [0,T). We are to consider these points as lying on a circle of circumference T. Now consider points X also from [0,T) and also lying on a circle of circumference T.
We say the distance between X and Y is the sum of the absolute distance between the each point in X and its closest point in Y recalling that both are considered to be lying in a circle. Write this distance as Delta(X, Y).
I am trying to find a quick way of determining a rotation of X which makes this distance as small as possible.
My code for making some data to test with is
#!/usr/bin/python
import random
import numpy as np
from bisect import bisect_left
def simul(rate, T):
time = np.random.exponential(rate)
times = [0]
newtime = times[-1]+time
while (newtime < T):
times.append(newtime)
newtime = newtime+np.random.exponential(rate)
return times[1:]
For each point I use this function to find its closest neighbor.
def takeClosest(myList, myNumber, T):
"""
Assumes myList is sorted. Returns closest value to myNumber in a circle of circumference T.
If two numbers are equally close, return the smallest number.
"""
pos = bisect_left(myList, myNumber)
before = myList[pos - 1]
after = myList[pos%len(myList)]
if after - myNumber < myNumber - before:
return after
else:
return before
So the distance between two circles is:
def circle_dist(timesY, timesX):
dist = 0
for t in timesX:
closest_number = takeClosest(timesY, t, T)
dist += np.abs(closest_number - t)
return dist
So to make some data we just do
#First make some data
T = 5000
timesX = simul(1, T)
timesY = simul(10, T)
Finally to rotate circle timesX by offset we can
timesX = [(t + offset)%T for t in timesX]
In practice my timesX and timesY will have about 20,000 points each.
Given timesX and timesY, how can I quickly find (approximately) which rotation of timesX gives
the smallest distance to timesY?
Distance along the circle between a single point and a set of points is a piecewise linear function of rotation. The critical points of this function are the points of the set itself (zero distance) and points midway between neighbouring points of the set (local maximums of distance). Linear coefficients of such function are ±1.
Sum of such functions is again piecewise linear, but now with a quadratic number of critical points. Actually all these functions are the same, except shifted along the argument axis. Linear coefficients of the sum are integers.
To find its minimum one would have to calculate its value in all critical points.
I don'see a way to significantly reduce the amount of work needed, but 1,600,000,000 points is not such a big deal anyway, especially if you can spread the work between several processors.
To calculate sum of two such functions, represent the summands as sequences of critical points and associated coefficients to the left and to the right of each critical point. Then just merge the two point sequences while adding the coefficients.
You can solve your (original) problem with a sweep line algorithm. The trick is to use the right "discretization". Imagine cutting your circle up into two strips:
X: x....x....x..........x................x.........x...x
Y: .....x..........x.....x..x.x...........x.............
Now calculate the score = 5+0++1+1+5+9+6.
The key observation is that if we rotate X very slightly (right say), some of the points will improve and some will get worse. We can call this the "differential". In the above example the differential would be 1 - 1 - 1 + 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 because the first point is matched to something on its right, the second point is matched to something under it or to its left etc.
Of course, as we move X more, the differential will change. However only as many times as the matchings change, which is never more than |X||Y| but probably much less.
The proposed algorithm is thus to calculate the initial score and the time (X position) of the next change in differential. Go to that next position and calculate the score again. Continue until you reach your starting position.
This is probably a good example for the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm:
It repeatedly matches each point with its closest neighbor and moves all points such that the mean squared distance is minimized. (Note that this corresponds to minimizing the sum of squared distances.)
import pylab as pl
T = 10.0
X = pl.array([3, 5.5, 6])
Y = pl.array([1, 1.5, 2, 4])
pl.clf()
pl.subplot(1, 2, 1, polar=True)
pl.plot(X / T * 2 * pl.pi, pl.ones(X.shape), 'r.', ms=10, mew=3)
pl.plot(Y / T * 2 * pl.pi, pl.ones(Y.shape), 'b+', ms=10, mew=3)
circDist = lambda X, Y: (Y - X + T / 2) % T - T / 2
while True:
D = circDist(pl.reshape(X, (-1, 1)), pl.reshape(Y, (1, -1)))
closestY = pl.argmin(D**2, axis = 1)
distance = circDist(X, Y[closestY])
shift = pl.mean(distance)
if pl.absolute(shift) < 1e-3:
break
X = (X + shift) % T
pl.subplot(1, 2, 2, polar=True)
pl.plot(X / T * 2 * pl.pi, pl.ones(X.shape), 'r.', ms=10, mew=3)
pl.plot(Y / T * 2 * pl.pi, pl.ones(Y.shape), 'b+', ms=10, mew=3)
Important properties of the proposed solution are:
The ICP is an iterative algorithm. Thus it depends on an initial approximate solution. Furthermore, it won't always converge to the global optimum. This mainly depends on your data and the initial solution. If in doubt, try evaluating the ICP with different starting configurations and choose the most frequent result.
The current implementation performs a directed match: It looks for the closest point in Y relative to each point in X. It might yield different matches when swapping X and Y.
Computing all pair-wise distances between points in X and points in Y might be intractable for large point clouds (like 20,000 points, as you indicated). Therefore, the line D = circDist(...) might get replaced by a more efficient approach, e.g. not evaluating all possible pairs.
All points contribute to the final rotation. If there are any outliers, they might distort the shift significantly. This can be overcome with a robust average like the median or simply by excluding points with large distance.

Calculating translation value and rotation angle of a rotated 2D image

I have two images which one of them is the Original image and the second one is Transformed image.
I have to find out how many degrees Transformed image was rotated using 3x3 transformation matrix. Plus, I need to find how far translated from origin.
Both images are grayscaled and held in matrix variables. Their sizes are same [350 500].
I have found a few lecture notes like this.
Lecture notes say that I should use the following matrix formula for rotation:
For translation matrix the formula is given:
Everything is good. But there are two problems:
I could not imagine how to implement the formulas using MATLAB.
The formulas are shaped to find x',y' values but I already have got x,x',y,y' values. I need to find rotation angle (theta) and tx and ty.
I want to know the equivailence of x, x', y, y' in the the matrix.
I have got the following code:
rotationMatrix = [ cos(theta) sin(theta) 0 ; ...
-sin(theta) cos(theta) 0 ; ...
0 0 1];
translationMatrix = [ 1 0 tx; ...
0 1 ty; ...
0 0 1];
But as you can see, tx, ty, theta variables are not defined before used. How can I calculate theta, tx and ty?
PS: It is forbidden to use Image Processing Toolbox functions.
This is essentially a homography recovery problem. What you are doing is given co-ordinates in one image and the corresponding co-ordinates in the other image, you are trying to recover the combined translation and rotation matrix that was used to warp the points from the one image to the other.
You can essentially combine the rotation and translation into a single matrix by multiplying the two matrices together. Multiplying is simply compositing the two operations together. You would this get:
H = [cos(theta) -sin(theta) tx]
[sin(theta) cos(theta) ty]
[ 0 0 1]
The idea behind this is to find the parameters by minimizing the error through least squares between each pair of points.
Basically, what you want to find is the following relationship:
xi_after = H*xi_before
H is the combined rotation and translation matrix required to map the co-ordinates from the one image to the other. H is also a 3 x 3 matrix, and knowing that the lower right entry (row 3, column 3) is 1, it makes things easier. Also, assuming that your points are in the augmented co-ordinate system, we essentially want to find this relationship for each pair of co-ordinates from the first image (x_i, y_i) to the other (x_i', y_i'):
[p_i*x_i'] [h11 h12 h13] [x_i]
[p_i*y_i'] = [h21 h22 h23] * [y_i]
[ p_i ] [h31 h32 1 ] [ 1 ]
The scale of p_i is to account for homography scaling and vanishing points. Let's perform a matrix-vector multiplication of this equation. We can ignore the 3rd element as it isn't useful to us (for now):
p_i*x_i' = h11*x_i + h12*y_i + h13
p_i*y_i' = h21*x_i + h22*y_i + h23
Now let's take a look at the 3rd element. We know that p_i = h31*x_i + h32*y_i + 1. As such, substituting p_i into each of the equations, and rearranging to solve for x_i' and y_i', we thus get:
x_i' = h11*x_i + h12*y_i + h13 - h31*x_i*x_i' - h32*y_i*x_i'
y_i' = h21*x_i + h22*y_i + h23 - h31*x_i*y_i' - h32*y_i*y_i'
What you have here now are two equations for each unique pair of points. What we can do now is build an over-determined system of equations. Take each pair and build two equations out of them. You will then put it into matrix form, i.e.:
Ah = b
A would be a matrix of coefficients that were built from each set of equations using the co-ordinates from the first image, b would be each pair of points for the second image and h would be the parameters you are solving for. Ultimately, you are finally solving this linear system of equations reformulated in matrix form:
You would solve for the vector h which can be performed through least squares. In MATLAB, you can do this via:
h = A \ b;
A sidenote for you: If the movement between images is truly just a rotation and translation, then h31 and h32 will both be zero after we solve for the parameters. However, I always like to be thorough and so I will solve for h31 and h32 anyway.
NB: This method will only work if you have at least 4 unique pairs of points. Because there are 8 parameters to solve for, and there are 2 equations per point, A must have at least a rank of 8 in order for the system to be consistent (if you want to throw in some linear algebra terminology in the loop). You will not be able to solve this problem if you have less than 4 points.
If you want some MATLAB code, let's assume that your points are stored in sourcePoints and targetPoints. sourcePoints are from the first image and targetPoints are for the second image. Obviously, there should be the same number of points between both images. It is assumed that both sourcePoints and targetPoints are stored as M x 2 matrices. The first columns contain your x co-ordinates while the second columns contain your y co-ordinates.
numPoints = size(sourcePoints, 1);
%// Cast data to double to be sure
sourcePoints = double(sourcePoints);
targetPoints = double(targetPoints);
%//Extract relevant data
xSource = sourcePoints(:,1);
ySource = sourcePoints(:,2);
xTarget = targetPoints(:,1);
yTarget = targetPoints(:,2);
%//Create helper vectors
vec0 = zeros(numPoints, 1);
vec1 = ones(numPoints, 1);
xSourcexTarget = -xSource.*xTarget;
ySourcexTarget = -ySource.*xTarget;
xSourceyTarget = -xSource.*yTarget;
ySourceyTarget = -ySource.*yTarget;
%//Build matrix
A = [xSource ySource vec1 vec0 vec0 vec0 xSourcexTarget ySourcexTarget; ...
vec0 vec0 vec0 xSource ySource vec1 xSourceyTarget ySourceyTarget];
%//Build RHS vector
b = [xTarget; yTarget];
%//Solve homography by least squares
h = A \ b;
%// Reshape to a 3 x 3 matrix (optional)
%// Must transpose as reshape is performed
%// in column major format
h(9) = 1; %// Add in that h33 is 1 before we reshape
hmatrix = reshape(h, 3, 3)';
Once you are finished, you have a combined rotation and translation matrix. If you want the x and y translations, simply pick off column 3, rows 1 and 2 in hmatrix. However, we can also work with the vector of h itself, and so h13 would be element 3, and h23 would be element number 6. If you want the angle of rotation, simply take the appropriate inverse trigonometric function to rows 1, 2 and columns 1, 2. For the h vector, this would be elements 1, 2, 4 and 5. There will be a bit of inconsistency depending on which elements you choose as this was solved by least squares. One way to get a good overall angle would perhaps be to find the angles of all 4 elements then do some sort of average. Either way, this is a good starting point.
References
I learned about homography a while ago through Leow Wee Kheng's Computer Vision course. What I have told you is based on his slides: http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~cs4243/lecture/camera.pdf. Take a look at slides 30-32 if you want to know where I pulled this material from. However, the MATLAB code I wrote myself :)

Algorithm for fitting points to a grid

I have a list of points in 2D space that form an (imperfect) grid:
x x x x
x x x x
x
x x x
x x x x
What's the best way to fit these to a rigid grid (i.e. create a two-dimendional array and work out where each point fits in that array)?
There are no holes in the grid, but I don't know in advance what its dimensions are.
EDIT: The grid is not necessarily regular (not even spacing between rows/cols)
A little bit of an image processing approach:
If you think of what you have as a binary image where the X is 1 and the rest is 0, you can sum up rows and columns, and use a peak finding algorithm to identify peaks which would correspond to x and y lines of the grid:
Your points as a binary image:
Sums of row/columns
Now apply some smoothing technique to the signal (e.g. lowess):
I'm sure you get the idea :-)
Good luck
The best I could come up with is a brute-force solution that calculates the grid dimensions that minimize the error in the square of the Euclidean distance between the point and its nearest grid intersection.
This assumes that the number of points p is exactly equal to the number of columns times the number of rows, and that each grid intersection has exactly one point on it. It also assumes that the minimum x/y value for any point is zero. If the minimum is greater than zero, just subtract the minimum x value from each point's x coordinate and the minimum y value from each point's y coordinate.
The idea is to create all of the possible grid dimensions given the number of points. In the example above with 16 points, we would make grids with dimensions 1x16, 2x8, 4x4, 8x2 and 16x1. For each of these grids we calculate where the grid intersections would lie by dividing the maximum width of the points by the number of columns minus 1, and the maximum height of the points by the number of rows minus 1. Then we fit each point to its closest grid intersection and find the error (square of the distance) between the point and the intersection. (Note that this only works if each point is closer to its intended grid intersection than to any other intersection.)
After summing the errors for each grid configuration individually (e.g. getting one error value for the 1x16 configuration, another for the 2x8 configuration and so on), we select the configuration with the lowest error.
Initialization:
P is the set of points such that P[i][0] is the x-coordinate and
P[i][1] is the y-coordinate
Let p = |P| or the number of points in P
Let max_x = the maximum x-coordinate in P
Let max_y = the maximum y-coordinate in P
(minimum values are assumed to be zero)
Initialize min_error_dist = +infinity
Initialize min_error_cols = -1
Algorithm:
for (col_count = 1; col_count <= n; col_count++) {
// only compute for integer # of rows and cols
if ((p % col_count) == 0) {
row_count = n/col_count;
// Compute the width of the columns and height of the rows
// If the number of columns is 1, let the column width be max_x
// (and similarly for rows)
if (col_count > 1) col_width = max_x/(col_count-1);
else col_width=max_x;
if (row_count > 1) row_height = max_y/(row_count-1);
else row_height=max_y;
// reset the error for the new configuration
error_dist = 0.0;
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
// For the current point, normalize the x- and y-coordinates
// so that it's in the range 0..(col_count-1)
// and 0..(row_count-1)
normalized_x = P[i][0]/col_width;
normalized_y = P[i][1]/row_height;
// Error is the sum of the squares of the distances between
// the current point and the nearest grid point
// (in both the x and y direction)
error_dist += (normalized_x - round(normalized_x))^2 +
(normalized_y - round(normalized_y))^2;
}
if (error_dist < min_error_dist) {
min_error_dist = error_dist;
min_error_cols = col_count;
}
}
}
return min_error_cols;
Once you've got the number of columns (and thus the number of rows) you can recompute the normalized values for each point and round them to get the grid intersection they belong to.
In the end I used this algorithm, inspired by beaker's:
Calculate all the possible dimensions of the grid, given the total number of points
For each possible dimension, fit the points to that dimension and calculate the variance in alignment:
Order the points by x-value
Group the points into columns: the first r points form the first column, where r is the number of rows
Within each column, order the points by y-value to determine which row they're in
For each row/column, calcuate the range of y-values/x-values
The variance in alignment is the maximum range found
Choose the dimension with the least variance in alignment
I wrote this algorithm that accounts for missing coordinates as well as coordinates with errors.
Python Code
# Input [x, y] coordinates of a 'sparse' grid with errors
xys = [[103,101],
[198,103],
[300, 99],
[ 97,205],
[304,202],
[102,295],
[200,303],
[104,405],
[205,394],
[298,401]]
def row_col_avgs(num_list, ratio):
# Finds the average of each row and column. Coordinates are
# assigned to a row and column by specifying an error ratio.
last_num = 0
sum_nums = 0
count_nums = 0
avgs = []
num_list.sort()
for num in num_list:
if num > (1 + ratio) * last_num and count_nums != 0:
avgs.append(int(round(sum_nums/count_nums,0)))
sum_nums = num
count_nums = 1
else:
sum_nums = sum_nums + num
count_nums = count_nums + 1
last_num = num
avgs.append(int(round(sum_nums/count_nums,0)))
return avgs
# Split coordinates into two lists of x's and y's
xs, ys = map(list, zip(*xys))
# Find averages of each row and column within a specified error.
x_avgs = row_col_avgs(xs, 0.1)
y_avgs = row_col_avgs(ys, 0.1)
# Return Completed Averaged Grid
avg_grid = []
for y_avg in y_avgs:
avg_row = []
for x_avg in x_avgs:
avg_row.append([int(x_avg), int(y_avg)])
avg_grid.append(avg_row)
print(avg_grid)
Code Output
[[[102, 101], [201, 101], [301, 101]],
[[102, 204], [201, 204], [301, 204]],
[[102, 299], [201, 299], [301, 299]],
[[102, 400], [201, 400], [301, 400]]]
I am also looking for another solution using linear algebra. See my question here.

Algorithm to generate random 2D polygon

I'm not sure how to approach this problem. I'm not sure how complex a task it is. My aim is to have an algorithm that generates any polygon. My only requirement is that the polygon is not complex (i.e. sides do not intersect). I'm using Matlab for doing the maths but anything abstract is welcome.
Any aid/direction?
EDIT:
I was thinking more of code that could generate any polygon even things like this:
I took #MitchWheat and #templatetypedef's idea of sampling points on a circle and took it a bit farther.
In my application I need to be able to control how weird the polygons are, ie start with regular polygons and as I crank up the parameters they get increasingly chaotic. The basic idea is as stated by #templatetypedef; walk around the circle taking a random angular step each time, and at each step put a point at a random radius. In equations I'm generating the angular steps as
where theta_i and r_i give the angle and radius of each point relative to the centre, U(min, max) pulls a random number from a uniform distribution, and N(mu, sigma) pulls a random number from a Gaussian distribution, and clip(x, min, max) thresholds a value into a range. This gives us two really nice parameters to control how wild the polygons are - epsilon which I'll call irregularity controls whether or not the points are uniformly space angularly around the circle, and sigma which I'll call spikeyness which controls how much the points can vary from the circle of radius r_ave. If you set both of these to 0 then you get perfectly regular polygons, if you crank them up then the polygons get crazier.
I whipped this up quickly in python and got stuff like this:
Here's the full python code:
import math, random
from typing import List, Tuple
def generate_polygon(center: Tuple[float, float], avg_radius: float,
irregularity: float, spikiness: float,
num_vertices: int) -> List[Tuple[float, float]]:
"""
Start with the center of the polygon at center, then creates the
polygon by sampling points on a circle around the center.
Random noise is added by varying the angular spacing between
sequential points, and by varying the radial distance of each
point from the centre.
Args:
center (Tuple[float, float]):
a pair representing the center of the circumference used
to generate the polygon.
avg_radius (float):
the average radius (distance of each generated vertex to
the center of the circumference) used to generate points
with a normal distribution.
irregularity (float):
variance of the spacing of the angles between consecutive
vertices.
spikiness (float):
variance of the distance of each vertex to the center of
the circumference.
num_vertices (int):
the number of vertices of the polygon.
Returns:
List[Tuple[float, float]]: list of vertices, in CCW order.
"""
# Parameter check
if irregularity < 0 or irregularity > 1:
raise ValueError("Irregularity must be between 0 and 1.")
if spikiness < 0 or spikiness > 1:
raise ValueError("Spikiness must be between 0 and 1.")
irregularity *= 2 * math.pi / num_vertices
spikiness *= avg_radius
angle_steps = random_angle_steps(num_vertices, irregularity)
# now generate the points
points = []
angle = random.uniform(0, 2 * math.pi)
for i in range(num_vertices):
radius = clip(random.gauss(avg_radius, spikiness), 0, 2 * avg_radius)
point = (center[0] + radius * math.cos(angle),
center[1] + radius * math.sin(angle))
points.append(point)
angle += angle_steps[i]
return points
def random_angle_steps(steps: int, irregularity: float) -> List[float]:
"""Generates the division of a circumference in random angles.
Args:
steps (int):
the number of angles to generate.
irregularity (float):
variance of the spacing of the angles between consecutive vertices.
Returns:
List[float]: the list of the random angles.
"""
# generate n angle steps
angles = []
lower = (2 * math.pi / steps) - irregularity
upper = (2 * math.pi / steps) + irregularity
cumsum = 0
for i in range(steps):
angle = random.uniform(lower, upper)
angles.append(angle)
cumsum += angle
# normalize the steps so that point 0 and point n+1 are the same
cumsum /= (2 * math.pi)
for i in range(steps):
angles[i] /= cumsum
return angles
def clip(value, lower, upper):
"""
Given an interval, values outside the interval are clipped to the interval
edges.
"""
return min(upper, max(value, lower))
#MateuszKonieczny here is code to create an image of a polygon from a list of vertices.
vertices = generate_polygon(center=(250, 250),
avg_radius=100,
irregularity=0.35,
spikiness=0.2,
num_vertices=16)
black = (0, 0, 0)
white = (255, 255, 255)
img = Image.new('RGB', (500, 500), white)
im_px_access = img.load()
draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)
# either use .polygon(), if you want to fill the area with a solid colour
draw.polygon(vertices, outline=black, fill=white)
# or .line() if you want to control the line thickness, or use both methods together!
draw.line(vertices + [vertices[0]], width=2, fill=black)
img.show()
# now you can save the image (img), or do whatever else you want with it.
There's a neat way to do what you want by taking advantage of the MATLAB classes DelaunayTri and TriRep and the various methods they employ for handling triangular meshes. The code below follows these steps to create an arbitrary simple polygon:
Generate a number of random points equal to the desired number of sides plus a fudge factor. The fudge factor ensures that, regardless of the result of the triangulation, we should have enough facets to be able to trim the triangular mesh down to a polygon with the desired number of sides.
Create a Delaunay triangulation of the points, resulting in a convex polygon that is constructed from a series of triangular facets.
If the boundary of the triangulation has more edges than desired, pick a random triangular facet on the edge that has a unique vertex (i.e. the triangle only shares one edge with the rest of the triangulation). Removing this triangular facet will reduce the number of boundary edges.
If the boundary of the triangulation has fewer edges than desired, or the previous step was unable to find a triangle to remove, pick a random triangular facet on the edge that has only one of its edges on the triangulation boundary. Removing this triangular facet will increase the number of boundary edges.
If no triangular facets can be found matching the above criteria, post a warning that a polygon with the desired number of sides couldn't be found and return the x and y coordinates of the current triangulation boundary. Otherwise, keep removing triangular facets until the desired number of edges is met, then return the x and y coordinates of triangulation boundary.
Here's the resulting function:
function [x, y, dt] = simple_polygon(numSides)
if numSides < 3
x = [];
y = [];
dt = DelaunayTri();
return
end
oldState = warning('off', 'MATLAB:TriRep:PtsNotInTriWarnId');
fudge = ceil(numSides/10);
x = rand(numSides+fudge, 1);
y = rand(numSides+fudge, 1);
dt = DelaunayTri(x, y);
boundaryEdges = freeBoundary(dt);
numEdges = size(boundaryEdges, 1);
while numEdges ~= numSides
if numEdges > numSides
triIndex = vertexAttachments(dt, boundaryEdges(:,1));
triIndex = triIndex(randperm(numel(triIndex)));
keep = (cellfun('size', triIndex, 2) ~= 1);
end
if (numEdges < numSides) || all(keep)
triIndex = edgeAttachments(dt, boundaryEdges);
triIndex = triIndex(randperm(numel(triIndex)));
triPoints = dt([triIndex{:}], :);
keep = all(ismember(triPoints, boundaryEdges(:,1)), 2);
end
if all(keep)
warning('Couldn''t achieve desired number of sides!');
break
end
triPoints = dt.Triangulation;
triPoints(triIndex{find(~keep, 1)}, :) = [];
dt = TriRep(triPoints, x, y);
boundaryEdges = freeBoundary(dt);
numEdges = size(boundaryEdges, 1);
end
boundaryEdges = [boundaryEdges(:,1); boundaryEdges(1,1)];
x = dt.X(boundaryEdges, 1);
y = dt.X(boundaryEdges, 2);
warning(oldState);
end
And here are some sample results:
The generated polygons could be either convex or concave, but for larger numbers of desired sides they will almost certainly be concave. The polygons are also generated from points randomly generated within a unit square, so polygons with larger numbers of sides will generally look like they have a "squarish" boundary (such as the lower right example above with the 50-sided polygon). To modify this general bounding shape, you can change the way the initial x and y points are randomly chosen (i.e. from a Gaussian distribution, etc.).
For a convex 2D polygon (totally off the top of my head):
Generate a random radius, R
Generate N random points on the circumference of a circle of Radius R
Move around the circle and draw straight lines between adjacent points on the circle.
As #templatetypedef and #MitchWheat said, it is easy to do so by generating N random angles and radii. It is important to sort the angles, otherwise it will not be a simple polygon. Note that I am using a neat trick to draw closed curves - I described it in here. By the way, the polygons might be concave.
Note that all of these polygons will be star shaped. Generating a more general polygon is not a simple problem at all.
Just to give you a taste of the problem - check out
http://www.cosy.sbg.ac.at/~held/projects/rpg/rpg.html
and http://compgeom.cs.uiuc.edu/~jeffe/open/randompoly.html.
function CreateRandomPoly()
figure();
colors = {'r','g','b','k'};
for i=1:5
[x,y]=CreatePoly();
c = colors{ mod(i-1,numel(colors))+1};
plotc(x,y,c);
hold on;
end
end
function [x,y]=CreatePoly()
numOfPoints = randi(30);
theta = randi(360,[1 numOfPoints]);
theta = theta * pi / 180;
theta = sort(theta);
rho = randi(200,size(theta));
[x,y] = pol2cart(theta,rho);
xCenter = randi([-1000 1000]);
yCenter = randi([-1000 1000]);
x = x + xCenter;
y = y + yCenter;
end
function plotc(x,y,varargin)
x = [x(:) ; x(1)];
y = [y(:) ; y(1)];
plot(x,y,varargin{:})
end
Here is a working port for Matlab of Mike Ounsworth solution. I did not optimized it for matlab. I might update the solution later for that.
function [points] = generatePolygon(ctrX, ctrY, aveRadius, irregularity, spikeyness, numVerts)
%{
Start with the centre of the polygon at ctrX, ctrY,
then creates the polygon by sampling points on a circle around the centre.
Randon noise is added by varying the angular spacing between sequential points,
and by varying the radial distance of each point from the centre.
Params:
ctrX, ctrY - coordinates of the "centre" of the polygon
aveRadius - in px, the average radius of this polygon, this roughly controls how large the polygon is, really only useful for order of magnitude.
irregularity - [0,1] indicating how much variance there is in the angular spacing of vertices. [0,1] will map to [0, 2pi/numberOfVerts]
spikeyness - [0,1] indicating how much variance there is in each vertex from the circle of radius aveRadius. [0,1] will map to [0, aveRadius]
numVerts - self-explanatory
Returns a list of vertices, in CCW order.
Website: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8997099/algorithm-to-generate-random-2d-polygon
%}
irregularity = clip( irregularity, 0,1 ) * 2*pi/ numVerts;
spikeyness = clip( spikeyness, 0,1 ) * aveRadius;
% generate n angle steps
angleSteps = [];
lower = (2*pi / numVerts) - irregularity;
upper = (2*pi / numVerts) + irregularity;
sum = 0;
for i =1:numVerts
tmp = unifrnd(lower, upper);
angleSteps(i) = tmp;
sum = sum + tmp;
end
% normalize the steps so that point 0 and point n+1 are the same
k = sum / (2*pi);
for i =1:numVerts
angleSteps(i) = angleSteps(i) / k;
end
% now generate the points
points = [];
angle = unifrnd(0, 2*pi);
for i =1:numVerts
r_i = clip( normrnd(aveRadius, spikeyness), 0, 2*aveRadius);
x = ctrX + r_i* cos(angle);
y = ctrY + r_i* sin(angle);
points(i,:)= [(x),(y)];
angle = angle + angleSteps(i);
end
end
function value = clip(x, min, max)
if( min > max ); value = x; return; end
if( x < min ) ; value = min; return; end
if( x > max ) ; value = max; return; end
value = x;
end

How many integer points within the three points forming a triangle?

Actually this is a classic problem as SO user Victor put it (in another SO question regarding which tasks to ask during an interview).
I couldn't do it in an hour (sigh) so what is the algorithm that calculates the number of integer points within a triangle?
EDIT: Assume that the vertices are at integer coordinates. (otherwise it becomes a problem of finding all points within the triangle and then subtracting all the floating points to be left with only the integer points; a less elegant problem).
Assuming the vertices are at integer coordinates, you can get the answer by constructing a rectangle around the triangle as explained in Kyle Schultz's An Investigation of Pick's Theorem.
For a j x k rectangle, the number of interior points is
I = (j – 1)(k – 1).
For the 5 x 3 rectangle below, there are 8 interior points.
(source: uga.edu)
For triangles with a vertical leg (j) and a horizontal leg (k) the number of interior points is given by
I = ((j – 1)(k – 1) - h) / 2
where h is the number of points interior to the rectangle that are coincident to the hypotenuse of the triangles (not the length).
(source: uga.edu)
For triangles with a vertical side or a horizontal side, the number of interior points (I) is given by
(source: uga.edu)
where j, k, h1, h2, and b are marked in the following diagram
(source: uga.edu)
Finally, the case of triangles with no vertical or horizontal sides can be split into two sub-cases, one where the area surrounding the triangle forms three triangles, and one where the surrounding area forms three triangles and a rectangle (see the diagrams below).
The number of interior points (I) in the first sub-case is given by
(source: uga.edu)
where all the variables are marked in the following diagram
(source: uga.edu)
The number of interior points (I) in the second sub-case is given by
(source: uga.edu)
where all the variables are marked in the following diagram
(source: uga.edu)
Pick's theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick%27s_theorem) states that the surface of a simple polygon placed on integer points is given by:
A = i + b/2 - 1
Here A is the surface of the triangle, i is the number of interior points and b is the number of boundary points. The number of boundary points b can be calculated easily by summing the greatest common divisor of the slopes of each line:
b = gcd(abs(p0x - p1x), abs(p0y - p1y))
+ gcd(abs(p1x - p2x), abs(p1y - p2y))
+ gcd(abs(p2x - p0x), abs(p2y - p0y))
The surface can also be calculated. For a formula which calculates the surface see https://stackoverflow.com/a/14382692/2491535 . Combining these known values i can be calculated by:
i = A + 1 - b/2
My knee-jerk reaction would be to brute-force it:
Find the maximum and minimum extent of the triangle in the x and y directions.
Loop over all combinations of integer points within those extents.
For each set of points, use one of the standard tests (Same side or Barycentric techniques, for example) to see if the point lies within the triangle. Since this sort of computation is a component of algorithms for detecting intersections between rays/line segments and triangles, you can also check this link for more info.
This is called the "Point in the Triangle" test.
Here is an article with several solutions to this problem: Point in the Triangle Test.
A common way to check if a point is in a triangle is to find the vectors connecting the point to each of the triangle's three vertices and sum the angles between those vectors. If the sum of the angles is 2*pi (360-degrees) then the point is inside the triangle, otherwise it is not.
Ok I will propose one algorithm, it won't be brilliant, but it will work.
First, we will need a point in triangle test. I propose to use the "Barycentric Technique" as explained in this excellent post:
http://www.blackpawn.com/texts/pointinpoly/default.html
Now to the algorithm:
let (x1,y1) (x2,y2) (x3,y3) be the triangle vertices
let ymin = floor(min(y1,y2,y3)) ymax = ceiling(max(y1,y2,y3)) xmin = floor(min(x1,x2,x3)) ymax = ceiling(max(x1,x2,3))
iterating from xmin to xmax and ymin to ymax you can enumerate all the integer points in the rectangular region that contains the triangle
using the point in triangle test you can test for each point in the enumeration to see if it's on the triangle.
It's simple, I think it can be programmed in less than half hour.
I only have half an answer for a non-brute-force method. If the vertices were integer, you could reduce it to figuring out how to find how many integer points the edges intersect. With that number and the area of the triangle (Heron's formula), you can use Pick's theorem to find the number of interior integer points.
Edit: for the other half, finding the integer points that intersect the edge, I suspect that it's the greatest common denominator between the x and y difference between the points minus one, or if the distance minus one if one of the x or y differences is zero.
Here's another method, not necessarily the best, but sure to impress any interviewer.
First, call the point with the lowest X co-ord 'L', the point with the highest X co-ord 'R', and the remaining point 'M' (Left, Right, and Middle).
Then, set up two instances of Bresenham's line algorithm. Parameterize one instance to draw from L to R, and the second to draw from L to M. Run the algorithms simultaneously for X = X[L] to X[M]. But instead of drawing any lines or turning on any pixels, count the pixels between the lines.
After stepping from X[L] to X[M], change the parameters of the second Bresenham to draw from M to R, then continue to run the algorithms simultaneously for X = X[M] to X[R].
This is very similar to the solution proposed by Erwin Smout 7 hours ago, but using Bresenham instead of a line-slope formula.
I think that in order to count the columns of pixels, you will need to determine whether M lies above or below the line LR, and of course special cases will arise when two points have the same X or Y co-ordinate. But by the time this comes up, your interviewer will be suitably awed and you can move on to the next question.
Quick n'dirty pseudocode:
-- Declare triangle
p1 2DPoint = (x1, y1);
p2 2DPoint = (x2, y2);
p3 2DPoint = (x3, y3);
triangle [2DPoint] := [p1, p2, p3];
-- Bounding box
xmin float = min(triangle[][0]);
xmax float = max(triangle[][0]);
ymin float = min(triangle[][1]);
ymax float = max(triangle[][1]);
result [[float]];
-- Points in bounding box might be inside the triangle
for x in xmin .. xmax {
for y in ymin .. ymax {
if a line starting in (x, y) and going in any direction crosses one, and only one, of the lines between the points in the triangle, or hits exactly one of the corners of the triangle {
result[result.count] = (x, y);
}
}
}
I have this idea -
Let A(x1, y1), B(x2, y2) and C(x3, y3) be the vertices of the triangle. Let 'count' be the number of integer points forming the triangle.
If we need the points on the triangle edges then using Euclidean Distance formula http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_distance, the length of all three sides can be ascertained.
The sum of length of all three sides - 3, would give that count.
To find the number of points inside the triangle we need to use a triangle fill algorithm and instead of doing the actual rendering i.e. executing drawpixel(x,y), just go through the loops and keep updating the count as we loop though.
A triangle fill algorithm from
Fundamentals of Computer Graphics by
Peter Shirley,Michael Ashikhmin
should help. Its referred here http://www.gidforums.com/t-20838.html
cheers
I'd go like this :
Take the uppermost point of the triangle (the one with the highest Y coordinate). There are two "slopes" starting at that point. It's not the general solution, but for easy visualisation, think of one of both "going to the left" (decreasing x coordinates) and the other one "going to the right".
From those two slopes and any given Y coordinate less than the highest point, you should be able to compute the number of integer points that appear within the bounds set by the slopes. Iterating over decreasing Y coordinates, add all those number of points together.
Stop when your decreasing Y coordinates reach the second-highest point of the triangle.
You have now counted all points "above the second-highest point", and you are now left with the problem of "counting all the points within some (much smaller !!!) triangle, of which you know that its upper side parallels the X-axis.
Repeat the same procedure, but now with taking the "leftmost point" instead of the "uppermost", and with proceedding "by increasing x", instead of by "decreasing y".
After that, you are left with the problem of counting all the integer points within a, once again much smaller, triangle, of which you know that its upper side parallels the X-axis, and its left side parallels the Y-axis.
Keep repeating (recurring), until you count no points in the triangle you're left with.
(Have I now made your homework for you ?)
(wierd) pseudo-code for a bit-better-than-brute-force (it should have O(n))
i hope you understand what i mean
n=0
p1,p2,p3 = order points by xcoordinate(p1,p2,p3)
for int i between p1.x and p2.x do
a = (intersection point of the line p1-p2 and the line with x==i).y
b = (intersection point of the line p1-p3 and the line with x==i).y
n += number of integers between floats (a, b)
end
for i between p2.x+1 and p3.x do
a = (intersection point of the line p2-p3 and the line with x==i).y
b = (intersection point of the line p1-p3 and the line with x==i).y
n += number of integers between floats (a, b)
end
this algorithm is rather easy to extend for vertices of type float (only needs some round at the "for i.." part, with a special case for p2.x being integer (there, rounded down=rounded up))
and there are some opportunities for optimization in a real implementation
Here is a Python implementation of #Prabhala's solution:
from collections import namedtuple
from fractions import gcd
def get_points(vertices):
Point = namedtuple('Point', 'x,y')
vertices = [Point(x, y) for x, y in vertices]
a, b, c = vertices
triangle_area = abs((a.x - b.x) * (a.y + b.y) + (b.x - c.x) * (b.y + c.y) + (c.x - a.x) * (c.y + a.y))
triangle_area /= 2
triangle_area += 1
interior = abs(gcd(a.x - b.x, a.y - b.y)) + abs(gcd(b.x - c.x, b.y - c.y)) + abs(gcd(c.x - a.x, c.y - a.y))
interior /= 2
return triangle_area - interior
Usage:
print(get_points([(-1, -1), (1, 0), (0, 1)])) # 1
print(get_points([[2, 3], [6, 9], [10, 160]])) # 289
I found a quite useful link which clearly explains the solution to this problem. I am weak in coordinate geometry so I used this solution and coded it in Java which works (at least for the test cases I tried..)
Link
public int points(int[][] vertices){
int interiorPoints = 0;
double triangleArea = 0;
int x1 = vertices[0][0], x2 = vertices[1][0], x3 = vertices[2][0];
int y1 = vertices[0][1], y2 = vertices[1][1], y3 = vertices[2][1];
triangleArea = Math.abs(((x1-x2)*(y1+y2))
+ ((x2-x3)*(y2+y3))
+ ((x3-x1)*(y3+y1)));
triangleArea /=2;
triangleArea++;
interiorPoints = Math.abs(gcd(x1-x2,y1-y2))
+ Math.abs(gcd(x2-x3, y2-y3))
+ Math.abs(gcd(x3-x1, y3-y1));
interiorPoints /=2;
return (int)(triangleArea - interiorPoints);
}

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