Charles W. Wampler

We provide relevant math and detailed sewing instructions for constructing a toroidal scarf that reverses three ways and whose design uses the unique inversion properties of a particular torus geometry and particular 3-component link. We explain how the scarf’s sewing instructions are guided by the mathematics underlying its construction. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

We present a method for solving two minimal problems for relative camera pose estimation from three views, which are based on three view correspondences of ( i ) three points and one line and the novel case of ( ii ) three points and two lines through two of the points. These problems are too difficult to be efficiently solved by the state of the art Gröbner basis methods. Our method is based on a new efficient homotopy continuation (HC) solver framework MINUS, which dramatically speeds up previous HC solving by specializing hc methods to generic cases of our problems. We characterize their number of solutions and show with simulated experiments that our solvers are numerically robust and stable under image noise, a key contribution given the borderline intractable degree of nonlinearity of trinocular constraints. We show in real experiments that ( i ) sift feature location and orientation provide good enough point-and-line correspondences for three-view reconstruction and ( ii ) that we can solve difficult cases with too few or too noisy tentative matches, where the state of the art structure from motion initialization fails.

Cognate linkages provide the useful property in mechanism design of having the same motion. This paper describes an approach for determining all coupler curve cognates for planar linkages with rotational joints. Although a prior compilation of six-bar cognates due to Dijksman purported to be a complete list, that analysis assumed, without proof, that cognates only arise by permuting link rotations. Our approach eliminates that assumption using arguments concerning the singular foci of the coupler curve to constrain a cognate search and then completing the analysis by solving a precision point problem. This analysis confirms that Dijksman’s list for six-bars is comprehensive. As we further demonstrate on an eight-bar and a ten-bar example, the method greatly constrains the set of permutations of link rotations that can possibly lead to cognates, thereby facilitating the discovery of all cognates that arise in that manner. However, for these higher order linkages, the further step of using a precision point test to eliminate the possibility of any other cognates is still beyond our computational capabilities.

Cognate linkages are mechanisms that share the same motion, a property that can be useful in mechanical design. This paper treats planar curve cognates, that is, planar mechanisms whose tracing point draws the same curve. While Roberts cognates for planar four-bars are relatively simple to understand from a geometric drawing, the same cannot be said for planar six-bar cognates,

Cognate linkages are mechanisms that share the same motion, a property that can be useful in mechanical design. This article treats planar curve cognates, that is, planar mechanisms with rotational joints whose coupler points draw the same curve, as well as coupler cognates and timed curve cognates. The purpose of this article is to develop a straightforward method based solely on kinematic equations to construct cognates. The approach computes cognates that arise from permuting link rotations and is shown to reproduce all of the known results for cognates of four-bar and six-bar linkages. This approach is then used to construct a cognate of an eight-bar and a ten-bar linkage.