On Packing 2D Irregular Shapes

Designing and implementing an intelligent system that tackles the problem of placing two-dimensional shapes on a surface, such that no shapes overlap and the uncovered surface area is minimized, is highly important in industrial applications. However, it is also interesting from the scientific perspective, in terms of artificial intelligence, since autonomous systems developed up to now have found it difficult to compete with humans in this task. This paper presents a new algorithm which addresses the on-line packing of two-dimensional irregular shapes, and achieves high quality solutions in short computational times. The key point of this algorithm is the utilization of techniques drawn from computer vision and artificial intelligence.