Computing the intersection-depth of polyhedra

Given two intersecting polyhedra P, Q and a direction d, find the smallest translation of Q along d that renders the interiors of P and Q disjoint. The same problem can also be posed without specifying the direction, in which case the minimum translation over all directions is sought. These are fundamental problems that arise in robotics and computer vision. We develop techniques for implicitly building and searching convolutions and apply them to derive efficient algorithms for these problems.