Summary: A Novel Type of Skeleton for Polygons
OSWIN AICHHOLZER
FRANZ AURENHAMMER
Institute for Theoretical Computer Science
Graz University of Technology
Klosterwiesgasse 32/2, A­8010 Graz, Austria
foaich,aureng@igi.tu­graz.ac.at
DAVID ALBERTS
BERND G ¨
ARTNER
Institut f¨ ur Informatik
Freie Universit¨ at Berlin
Takustraße 9, D­14195 Berlin, Germany
falberts,gaertnerg@inf.fu­berlin.de
Keywords: Simple polygon, angular bisectors, internal skeleton, roof construction
Abstract A new internal structure for simple polygons, the straight skeleton, is introduced and dis­
cussed. It is composed of pieces of angular bisectores which partition the interior of a given n­gon P
in a tree­like fashion into n monotone polygons. Its straight­line structure and its lower combinatorial
complexity may make the straight skeleton preferable to the widely used medial axis of a polygon.
As a seemingly unrelated application, the straight skeleton provides a canonical way of constructing

Source: Aurenhammer, Franz - Institute for Theoretical Computer Science, Technische Universität Graz
Technische Universität Graz, Institute for Software Technology

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences