On-line space sculpturing for 3D shape manipulation

We present a new data structure, called the Multi-Sculpure to represent 3D shapes at multiple levels of detail. The input shape at high resolution is described as a mesh of triangles. A coarse approximation of this shape is provided by the convex hull of the mesh, while intermediate approximations al-e obtained by sculpturing the space that separates the convex hull from the mesh. A higher level of detail corresponds to a higher deg, ee of concavity in the shape approximation. The data structure supports on-line extraction of a shape representation at a user-defined level of detail, possibly varing over different pal ts of the shape. This mechanism allows speeding up recognition, classification, collision detection, and planning of manipulation tasks.