Scientific Puzzle Solving: Current Techniques and Applications

An automated assembling of shredded/torn documents (2D) or broken pottery (3D) will support philologists, archaeologists and forensic experts. Especially if the amount of fragments is large (up to 1000), the compilation will not be feasible for a human puzzle solver due to cost and time. Approaches to solve the task of fragmented objects or puzzles can be divided into shape based matching techniques (apictorial) or techniques that analyze also the visual content of the fragments (pictorial), e.g. either image features or texture based analysis are done. Depending on the application, shape matching techniques are suitable for entities of the puzzle problem with small numbers of pieces (e.g. up to 20) and they cannot be applied to applications with hundreds of fragments due to the complexity. Also, artefacts like broken and lost pieces or overlapping parts of fragments increase the error rate of shape based matching techniques. This paper presents an overview about puzzle-solving techniques and their applications. It will introduce to the main problems in solving puzzles and will also focus on applications for the assembling of fragmented (ancient) documents..