Optimal distance between clusters in space - math

I start working at a project for an CNC machine and I am struggling to make an optimal algorithm to cut different parts of some type of material.
The problem can be put in this way: I have a set of clusters. Each cluster represent the form I wish to cut. I need to find a way to move the cutting edge to visit all clusters but only one time for each cluster. Also the path that I choose needs to be absolutely optimal. I also need to do this for around 5.000 edges. As an input I have a matrix of all the distances from each edge to others. The Dijkstra or Froyd algorithm can not handle so many edges. I tried the single-linkage method with the Slink optimization but it fails in most of the possible cases.
This is an example of what I want to do. The red lines form the clusters and the blue lines represent the path of the cutting edge. I need to find the shortest path from a random cluster to each other cluster visiting only once the most suitable edge of each cluster. How to do this?

Related

Minimum length of lines needed

Suppose we have a set of N points on the cartesian plane (x_i and y_i). Suppose we connect those points with lines.
Is there any way like using a graph and something like a shortest path algorithm or minimum spanning tree so that we can reach any point starting from any point but minimizing the total length of the lines??
I though that maybe I could set the cost of the edges with the distance of a graph and use a shortest path algorithm but I'm not sure if this is possible.
Any ideas ?
I'm not 100% sure what you want, so I go for two algorithms.
First: you just want a robust algorithm, use dijkstras algorithm. The only challange left is to define the edge cost. Which would be 1 for neighboring nodes, I assume.
Second: you want to use heuristics to estimate the next best node and optimize time consumption. Use A*, but you need to write a heuristic which under estimates the distance. You could use the euclidean distance to do so. The edge problematic stays the same.

Create graph of distinct routes

Problem I have a binary image with traversable and blocked cells. On this map points of interest (POIs) are set. My goal is to create a graph from these POIs respecting obstacles (see images) which represents all possible and truly distinct paths. Two paths are truly distinct if they can not be joined into one path. E.g. if the outside of the building in picture 1 was accessible a path around the building could not be merged with one through the building.
Researched I have looked at maze solvers and various shortest path finding algorithms (e.g. A*, Theta*, Phi*) and while they'd be useful for this problem they only search for a path between two points and don't consider already established routes.
Best Guess I am considering using Phi* to search for all possible routes and merge afterwards using magic (ideas?), but this will not give me truly distinct alternatives.
Can someone help?
P.S.: I'm using C++ and am not really eager to do this by myself, so if there is a library which already does this... :)
I found (and decided to use) a parallel thinning algorithm (Zhan-Suen for now) to create an image skeleton. This effectively makes the assumption that the geometry shapes the common routes, which is fine I think.
By using the Rutovitz crossing number I can extract bifurcations and crossings from the resulting skeleton. Then I'll determine the shortest line of sight from my Points of Interest (using Bresenham's algorithm) to the extracted crossings to connect them to the graph.
I hope this will help someone along the road :)

Clustering in Gephi (Louvain Method)

I have started to work with gephi to help me display a dataset.
The dataset contains:
tags (terms for a certain picture) as nodes
Normalized Google Similarity Distance between those tags as edges with a weight (between 0 und 1)
Every tag is connected to every other tag, as long as they both belong to the same picture. So I have one cluster of nodes and edges for every picture.
I have now imported this dataset to gephi in the following format:
nodes: id, label
edges: target, source, weight (between 0 and 1)
Like 500 nodes and 6000 edges.
My problem now is that after importing all those nodes and edges the graph looks kind of bunched with no real order. Every cluster of every picture is mixed into other clusters of other pictures.
Now using Modularity as Partition algorithm (which should use the Louvain method) the graph is getting colored, each color represent a picture. Now I can split this mess, using the Force Atlas 2 Layout.
I now have a colored graph with something like 15 clusters (every cluster represent 1 picture)
Now I want to cluster those clusters again using tags (nodes) according to their Normalized google distance (weight of the edges), which should then be tags which are somewhat equal in their meaning.
I hope you guys understand what I want to accomplish.
I can also upload a picture to clarify it.
Thanks a lot
I don't think you can do that with the standard version of Gephi. You would need to develop a plugin to implement the very last step of your process.
Gephi is good for visualizing and browsing graphs, but (for now) there are more complete tools when it comes to processing topological properties. for instance, the igraph library (available in C, R and python) might be more appropriate for you. And note that you can use a file format compatible with both Gephi and igraph, which allows you to use both tools on the same data.
I was able to solve my problem. I had to import every one of these 15 clusters on their own. In this way i could use the Modularity method on just those few.

Finding shortest paths to all desired points in a graph

I was asked the following question in an interview
You are given a 4 X 4 grid. Some locations on the grid contain
treasure. Your task is the visit all the locations that contain the
treasure and collect it. You are allowed to move on the four adjacent
cells (up, down, left, right). Each movement and the action of
"treasure collection" is of a single unit cost. You need to traverse
the entire grid, and collect all the treasure on the grid, minimizing
the cost taken.
If I can recall properly, here is a sample graph that was given:
U..X
..X.
X..X
..X.
Where, U is my current position and X marks the position of the treasure.
The solution that I presented was to use breadth first search traversing the graph and "collecting the treasure" while doing so. However, the interviewer insisted that there was a better way to minimize the cost. I hope you could help me in figuring it out.
You should have recognized that this is a Traveling Salesman Problem in a small disguise. Using breadth-first, you can determine the shortest way between the different vertices you have to visit which gives you a derived graph containing just those ways as weighted edges between the vertices. From then on, it's a classic TSP.
BFS alone is not going to solve it for you, because you cannot move in all directions at the same time. It is not a single-source shortest path problem, because once you collect the treasure, you start your path to the next one from your current spot, not from the original spot.
The time that it takes to collect all treasure depends on the order in which you visit the boxes with X. Since there are only five of them, you can try all 120 orderings, compute the cost, and pick the best one.
Note that if the order is fixed, the solution is trivial: you add up manhattan distances between the cells in order, and pick the smallest result.

Graph Drawing With Weighted Edges

I'm looking to build an algorithm (or reuse one) that organizes nodes and edges on a 2 dimensional canvas where edges can have corresponding weights.
Any starting material and info would be helpful.
What would the weights do to affect their placement on your canvas?
That being said, you might want to look into graphviz and, more specifically, the DOT language, which organizes nodes on a canvas.
Many graph visualization frameworks use a force-based simulation, in which all nodes exert a repulsive force against each other (with their mass being their size), and edges exert tension on the nodes they connect. This creates aesthetically-arranged graph visualizations.
Although again, I'm not sure where you want node "weights" to come into play. Do you want weighted nodes to be more in the center? To be larger? More further apart?
Many graph/network layout algorithms are implicitly capable of handling weighted networks, but you may need to do some pre-processing and tweaks to the implementation to get it to work. Usually the first step is to determine if your weights represent "similarities" (usually interpreted to mean that stronger weights should place nodes closer togeter) or "dissimilarities" (stronger weights = father apart). The most common case is the former, so you will need to translate them to dissimilarities, often done by subtracting each edge value from the maximum observed edge value in the network. The matrix of dissimilarity values for each edge can then be fed to the algorithm and interpreted as desired distances in the layout space for each edge (i.e. "spring lengths")--usually after multiplying by some constant to transform to display units (pixels).
If you tell me what language you are using, I may be able to point you to some code examples.

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