Finding the closest points between two modeled objects is a fundamental operation in robotics, computer graphics, and computational geometry. This dissertation is motivated by the use of distance functions in haptic interfaces for virtual prototyping, where distance measures provide the basis for forces that are applied to a human user. The requirements for haptic interfaces mean that these dis...

We prove a formula for the minimum distance of two-point codes on a Hermitian curve.

We study the computational complexity of several problems connected with the problems of finding a maximal distance-k matching of minimum cardinality or minimum weight. We introduce the class of k-equimatchable graphs which is an edge analogue of k-equipackable graphs. We prove that the recognition of k-equimatchable graphs is co-NP-complete for any fixed k ≥ 2. We provide a simple characteriza...

Inference procedures based on the Hellinger distance provide attractive alternatives to likelihood based methods for the statistician. The minimum Hellinger distance estimator has full asymptotic efficiency under the model together with strong robustness properties under model misspecification. However, the Hellinger distance puts too large a weight on the inliers which appears to be the main r...