Title
Exploring Curved Schematization of Territorial Outlines
Abstract
Hand-drawn schematized maps traditionally make extensive use of curves. However, there are few automated approaches for curved schematization; most previous work focuses on straight lines. We present a new algorithm for areapreserving curved schematization of territorial outlines. Our algorithm converts a simple polygon into a schematic crossing-free representation using circular arcs.We use two basic operations to iteratively replace consecutive arcs until the desired complexity is reached. Our results are not restricted to arcs ending at input vertices. The method can be steered towards different degrees of “curviness”: we can encourage or discourage the use of arcs with a large central angle via a single parameter. Our method creates visually pleasing results even for very low output complexities. To evaluate the effectiveness of our design choices, we present a geometric evaluation of the resulting schematizations. Besides the geometric qualities of our algorithm, we also investigate the potential of curved schematization as a concept. We conducted an online user study investigating the effectiveness of curved schematizations compared to straight-line schematizations. While the visual complexity of curved shapes was judged higher than that of straight-line shapes, users generally preferred curved schematizations. We observed that curves significantly improved the ability of users to match schematized shapes of moderate complexity to their unschematized equivalents.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1109/TVCG.2015.2401025
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
Keywords
Field
DocType
Schematization, circular arcs, algorithm, user study
Visual complexity,Computer vision,Algorithm design,Central angle,Vertex (geometry),Computer science,Visualization,Theoretical computer science,Schematic,Artificial intelligence,Simple polygon
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
PP
99
1077-2626
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
3
0.38
17
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Arthur van Goethem1123.59
W Wouter Meulemans213018.74
Bettina Speckmann387679.40
Jo Wood439629.05