Paper:
Language: English:

Distance Field Model Concept for Space Representation

Yasuyuki Murai^, Suguru Asaoka^, Hiroyuki Tsuji^,
Hisayuki Tatsumi^, and Shinji Tokumasu^

^School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nihon Pharmaceutical University, 10281 Komuro, Inamachi, Kita-adachi-gun, Saitama 362-0806, Japan
^Dept. of Information and Computer Sciences, Kanagawa Institute of Technology, 1030 Shimo-ogino, Atsugi, Kanagawa 243-0292, Japan
^Dept. of Computer Science, Tsukuba University of Technology, 4-12-7 Kasuga, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8521, Japan

Received: October 18, 2006

Accepted: August 24, 2007

Keywords: geometric model, space model, robotics, artificial intelligence

Journal ref: Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Vol.11, No.10 pp. 1241-1249, 2007

Abstract

The distance field model (DFM), a new approach to space reasoning, i.e., the recognition and understanding of space, is realized by introducing the concept that a spatial object placed in a space generates a “distance field” represented by a function that maps arbitrary point P in space into a real number: the distance from P to this object. Analyzing the distance field, it is easy to judge, for example, what the surroundings are or how close obstacles are. To enable readers to understand the DFM concept, we introduce an object-oriented scheme to represent functions, and, by constructing a simplified object-oriented version of 2-dimensional (2D) DFM, we have compactly and comprehensively implemented the model. We also show that DFM is not limited to 2-dimensional space, but can be extended from the original to 3-dimensional (3D) or 2D-3D mixed systems.

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