Determination of optimal polygonal approximation using genetic algorithms

A new polygonal approximation algorithm is presented which gives the minimum number of sides for the approximated polygon under a uniform error norm. In the proposed method, a chromosome is used to represent a polygon and is represented by a binary string. Each bit, called a gene, represents a point on the given curve. The convergence of the method is guaranteed and optimal or near-optimal solutions can be obtained. Some experimental results depict the feasibility of the proposed approach.