Multi-degree reduction of Bézier curves using reparameterization

L₂-norms are often used in the multi-degree reduction problem of Bézier curves or surfaces. Conventional methods on curve cases are to minimize , where and are the given curve and the approximation curve, respectively. A much better solution is to minimize , where is the closest point to point , that produces a similar effect as that of the Hausdorff distance. This paper uses a piecewise linear function L(t) instead of t to approximate the function φ(t) for a constrained multi-degree reduction of Bézier curves. Numerical examples show that this new reparameterization-based method has a much better approximation effect under Hausdorff distance than those of previous methods.     

Narrowing power vs efficiency in synchronous set agreement: Relationship, algorithms and lower bound

The k-set agreement problem is a generalization of the uniform consensus problem: each process proposes a value, and each non-faulty process has to decide a value such that a decided value is a proposed value, and at most k different values are decided. It has been shown that any algorithm that solves the k-set agreement problem in synchronous systems that can suffer up to t crash failures requires rounds in the worst case. It has also been shown that it is possible to design early deciding algorithms where no process decides and halts after rounds, where f is the number of actual crashes in a run (0≤f≤t).This paper explores a new direction to solve the k-set agreement problem in a synchronous system. It considers that the system is enriched with base objects (denoted has [m,?]_SA objects) that allow solving the ?-set agreement problem in a set of m processes (m<n). The paper makes several contributions. It first proposes a synchronous k-set agreement algorithm that benefits from such underlying base objects. This algorithm requires rounds, more precisely, rounds, where . The paper then shows that this bound, that involves all the parameters that characterize both the problem (k) and its environment (t, m and ?), is a lower bound. The proof of this lower bound sheds additional light on the deep connection between synchronous efficiency and asynchronous computability. Finally, the paper extends its investigation to the early deciding case. It presents a k-set agreement algorithm that directs the processes to decide and stop by round . These bounds generalize the bounds previously established for solving the k-set agreement problem in pure synchronous systems.