A sweep and translate algorithm for computing voxelized 3D Minkowski sums on the GPU

•Algorithm for computing voxelized Minkowski sum of two input polyhedra.•New decomposition formula for computing Minkowski sum, with proof.•Efficient GPU implementation using stencil shadow volumes.

Computing the Minkowski sum of two arbitrary polyhedra in R3R3 is difficult because of high combinatorial complexity. We present an algorithm for directly computing a voxelization of the Minkowski sum of two closed watertight input polyhedra for applications such as path planning that do not require a boundary representation as output. We introduce a new decomposition formula for computing the Minkowski sum and prove its correctness. We describe an efficient Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) implementation of the algorithm using stencil shadow volumes to create a solid voxelization of the Minkowski sum.