Course Announcement - Spring 2009

CS 709a: Special Topics in Computer Science - Advanced Algorithms and Complexity

Instructor: Dan Coming -- dan.coming@dri.edu

Time: Thursdays 5:30-8:15pm

Room: SEM 257

Call number: 29680

Website: http://www.cse.unr.edu/~coming/cs709a/

Data structures and algorithms for spatial data, fundamental to wide-ranging applications in computer science including: computer graphics, visualization, computer vision, robotics, and games.

Covered Topics:

• dimensionality (2D, 3D, nD), orderings and reduction

• multidimensional points and objects

• range trees

• hierarchical spatial data structures (quadtrees/octrees, kd-trees, binary space partitions, bounding volume hierarchies)

• grids and hashes

• plane-sweep and rectangle intersection

• boundary representations

• movement and kinetic data structures

• algorithms for spatial sorting and searching (nearest neighbor, distance-based groupings, and intersection)

• applications of spatial data structures

• application-specific heuristics

Prerequisites: Junior level coursework

Assignments

• Projects: students will complete three projects for the course. The first two projects will involve spatial searching and sorting using object-space and world-space subdivision. For the final project, students will propose and test a spatial data structure for their chosen area of interest.

• Presentation: students will each read and present an approved research paper which describes a novel spatial data structure or novel application of spatial data structures to a chosen application.

Textbook and Readings:

Hanan Samet, Foundations of Multidimensional and Metric Data Structures , ISBN 0-12-369446-9

Selected research publications on applications of spatial data structures