No Arabic abstract
We present an algorithm for producing Delaunay triangulations of manifolds. The algorithm can accommodate abstract manifolds that are not presented as submanifolds of Euclidean space. Given a set of sample points and an atlas on a compact manifold, a manifold Delaunay complex is produced provided the transition functions are bi-Lipschitz with a constant close to 1, and the sample points meet a local density requirement; no smoothness assumptions are required. If the transition functions are smooth, the output is a triangulation of the manifold. The output complex is naturally endowed with a piecewise flat metric which, when the original manifold is Riemannian, is a close approximation of the original Riemannian metric. In this case the ouput complex is also a Delaunay triangulation of its vertices with respect to this piecewise flat metric.
Delaunay triangulation is a well-known geometric combinatorial optimization problem with various applications. Many algorithms can generate Delaunay triangulation given an input point set, but most are nontrivial algorithms requiring an understanding of geometry or the performance of additional geometric operations, such as the edge flip. Deep learning has been used to solve various combinatorial optimization problems; however, generating Delaunay triangulation based on deep learning remains a difficult problem, and very few research has been conducted due to its complexity. In this paper, we propose a novel deep-learning-based approach for learning Delaunay triangulation using a new attention mechanism based on self-attention and domain knowledge. The proposed model is designed such that the model efficiently learns point-to-point relationships using self-attention in the encoder. In the decoder, a new attention score function using domain knowledge is proposed to provide a high penalty when the geometric requirement is not satisfied. The strength of the proposed attention score function lies in its ability to extend its application to solving other combinatorial optimization problems involving geometry. When the proposed neural net model is well trained, it is simple and efficient because it automatically predicts the Delaunay triangulation for an input point set without requiring any additional geometric operations. We conduct experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model and conclude that it exhibits better performance compared with other deep-learning-based approaches.
We present criteria for establishing a triangulation of a manifold. Given a manifold M, a simplicial complex A, and a map H from the underlying space of A to M, our criteria are presented in local coordinate charts for M, and ensure that H is a homeomorphism. These criteria do not require a differentiable structure, or even an explicit metric on M. No Delaunay property of A is assumed. The result provides a triangulation guarantee for algorithms that construct a simplicial complex by working in local coordinate patches. Because the criteria are easily verified in such a setting, they are expected to be of general use.
Delaunay has shown that the Delaunay complex of a finite set of points $P$ of Euclidean space $mathbb{R}^m$ triangulates the convex hull of $P$, provided that $P$ satisfies a mild genericity property. Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay complexes can be defined for arbitrary Riemannian manifolds. However, Delaunays genericity assumption no longer guarantees that the Delaunay complex will yield a triangulation; stronger assumptions on $P$ are required. A natural one is to assume that $P$ is sufficiently dense. Although results in this direction have been claimed, we show that sample density alone is insufficient to ensure that the Delaunay complex triangulates a manifold of dimension greater than 2.
Meshes composed of well-centered simplices have nice orthogonal dual meshes (the dual Voronoi diagram). This is useful for certain numerical algorithms that prefer such primal-dual mesh pairs. We prove that well-centered meshes also have optimality properties and relationships to Delaunay and minmax angle triangulations. We present an iterative algorithm that seeks to transform a given triangulation in two or three dimensions into a well-centered one by minimizing a cost function and moving the interior vertices while keeping the mesh connectivity and boundary vertices fixed. The cost function is a direct result of a new characterization of well-centeredness in arbitrary dimensions that we present. Ours is the first optimization-based heuristic for well-centeredness, and the first one that applies in both two and three dimensions. We show the results of applying our algorithm to small and large two-dimensional meshes, some with a complex boundary, and obtain a well-centered tetrahedralization of the cube. We also show numerical evidence that our algorithm preserves gradation and that it improves the maximum and minimum angles of acute triangulations created by the best known previous method.
We define signed dual volumes at all dimensions for circumcentric dual meshes. We show that for pairwise Delaunay triangulations with mild boundary assumptions these signed dual volumes are positive. This allows the use of such Delaunay meshes for Discrete Exterior Calculus (DEC) because the discrete Hodge star operator can now be correctly defined for such meshes. This operator is crucial for DEC and is a diagonal matrix with the ratio of primal and dual volumes along the diagonal. A correct definition requires that all entries be positive. DEC is a framework for numerically solving differential equations on meshes and for geometry processing tasks and has had considerable impact in computer graphics and scientific computing. Our result allows the use of DEC with a much larger class of meshes than was previously considered possible.