Path planning for the Platonic solids on prescribed grids by edge-rolling

• Published in 2021
• Added on 2025-11-11

The five Platonic solids—tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron—have found many applications in mathematics, science, and art. Path planning for the Platonic solids had been suggested, but not validated, except for solving the rolling-cube puzzles for a cubic dice. We developed a path-planning algorithm based on the breadth-first-search algorithm that generates a shortest path for each Platonic solid to reach a desired pose, including position and orientation, from an initial one on prescribed grids by edge-rolling. While it is straightforward to generate triangular and square grids, various methods exist for regular-pentagon tiling. We chose the Penrose tiling because it has five-fold symmetry. We discovered that a tetrahedron could achieve only one orientation for a particular position.

Links

• https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0252613#pone-0252613-g006
• https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0252613&type=printable

Other information

BibTeX entry

@article{PathplanningforthePlatonicsolidsonprescribedgridsbyedgerolling,
	key = {PathplanningforthePlatonicsolidsonprescribedgridsbyedgerolling},
	type = {article},
	title = {Path planning for the Platonic solids on prescribed grids by edge-rolling},
	author = {Ngoc Tam Lam and Ian Howard and Lei Cui},
	abstract = {The five Platonic solids—tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron—have found many applications in mathematics, science, and art. Path planning for the Platonic solids had been suggested, but not validated, except for solving the rolling-cube puzzles for a cubic dice. We developed a path-planning algorithm based on the breadth-first-search algorithm that generates a shortest path for each Platonic solid to reach a desired pose, including position and orientation, from an initial one on prescribed grids by edge-rolling. While it is straightforward to generate triangular and square grids, various methods exist for regular-pentagon tiling. We chose the Penrose tiling because it has five-fold symmetry. We discovered that a tetrahedron could achieve only one orientation for a particular position.},
	comment = {},
	date_added = {2025-11-11},
	date_published = {2021-11-22},
	urls = {https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0252613{\#}pone-0252613-g006,https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0252613{\&}type=printable},
	collections = {geometry,things-to-make-and-do},
	url = {https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0252613{\#}pone-0252613-g006 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0252613{\&}type=printable},
	year = 2021,
	urldate = {2025-11-11},
	doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0252613},
	journal = {PLOS ONE},
	issue = 6,
	volume = 16,
	issn = {1932-6203},
	publisher = {Public Library of Science},
	identifier = {10.1371/journal.pone.0252613}
}