The Minkowski Difference for Convex Polyhedra and Some its Applications

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to develop a unified algebraical approach to representing the Minkowski difference for convex polyhedra. Namely, there is proposed an exact analytical formulas of the Minkowski difference for convex polyhedra with different representations. We study the cases when both operands under the Minkowski difference operation simultaneously have a vertex or a half-space representation. We also focus on the description of the Minkowski difference for a such mixed case where the first operand has the linear constraint structure and the second one is expressible as the convex hull of a finite collection of some given points. Unlike the widespread geometric approach considering mostly two-dimensional or three-dimensional spaces, we investigate the objects in finite-dimensional spaces of arbitrary dimensionality.