Solid Shape

Solid Shape gives engineers and applied scientists access to the extensive mathematical literature on three dimensional shapes. Drawing on the author's deep and personal understanding of three-dimensional space, it adopts an intuitive visual approach designed to develop heuristic tools of real use in applied contexts.Increasing activity in such areas as computer aided design and robotics calls for sophisticated methods to characterize solid objects. A wealth of mathematical research exists that can greatly facilitate this work yet engineers have continued to"reinvent the wheel" as they grapple with problems in three dimensional geometry. Solid Shape bridges the gap that now exists between technical and modern geometry and shape theory or computer vision, offering engineers a new way to develop the intuitive feel for behavior of a system under varying situations without learning the mathematicians' formal proofs. Reliance on descriptive geometry rather than analysis and on representations most easily implemented on microcomputers reinforces this emphasis on transforming the theoretical to the practical.Chapters cover shape and space, Euclidean space, curved submanifolds, curves, local patches, global patches, applications in ecological optics, morphogenesis, shape in flux, and flux models. A final chapter on literature research and an appendix on how to draw and use diagrams invite readers to follow their own pursuits in threedimensional shape.Jan J. Koenderinck is Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Utrecht University. Solid Shape is included in the Artificial Intelligence series, edited by Patrick Winston, Michael Brady, and Daniel Bobrow

Solid Shape gives engineers and applied scientists access to the extensive mathematical literature on three dimensional shapes.

Booknews

A book like no other. The author (who is attached to the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Utrecht) writes from a deep knowledge of those diverse branches of classical/modern mathematics which have to do with the representation and analysis of three- dimensional surfaces. But his objective has by no means been to produce a "poor man's guide to differential geometry, to topology, to catastrophy theory" but--by borrowing luminously from those fields and others--to expose to engineers concerned with robotics, with computer-aided design, the rich variety of concepts and organizing principles which are available to them as ready-made imagination- expanding tools. This he does in a wonderfully fresh way, with breezy text and heavy reliance upon a very large number of beautifully executed figures. This is, for technical people of many sorts, bedtime reading of the highest order, as unique and pleasure-filled as was d'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form. (NW) Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Jan J. Koenderink is Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Utrecht University.