Algorithms To Reassemble Ancient Map of Rome

MattJ writes "The BBC reports on a Stanford project to reconstruct pieces of an ancient, detailed, 60' by 43' 'map of Rome carved into stone slabs about AD 210 but later broken into fragments.' ... So complicated is the jumble of parts that for decades the map pieces have been referred to as 'the biggest jigsaw in the world.' Researchers developed algorithms to assemble the 3D fragments of the map, and have had some success."

Comments

Ancient buildings

[Alomex]

Similar techniques have been applied to frescoes and estelas of ancient buildings with somewhat higher rate of success. This map seems a particularly hard instance given the similarity of the patterns while at the same time having no global regularity. In contrast building designs often repeat patterns, so you only need to solve the puzzle once for a pattern and thereafter apply the same solution.