Swept Volumes of many Poses

Abstract

We consider the swept volume A(X) of a rigid body X which assumes a general set A of positions. A special case of this is a one-parameter motion of X, where the set of poses is curve-like. Here we consider a full-dimensional subset A of the motion group. Such a set of poses can be seen as the tolerance zone of an imprecisely defined pose. Alternatively, a set of poses may be obtained by by measurements or simulation. We analyze the geometric properties of such sets of poses and give algorithms for computing the boundary deltaA(X) in the case that A is a discrete pose cloud. The dimension of the problem, which equals six a priori, is reduced to two.