Immobilizing a Polytope

We say that a polygon P is immobilized by a set of points I on its boundary if any rigid motion of P in the plane causes at least one point of I to penetrate the interior of P. Three immobilization points are always sufficient for a polygon with vertices in general positions, but four points are necessary for some polygons with parallel edges. An O(n log n) algorithm that finds a set of 3 points that immobilize a given polygon with vertices in general positions is suggested. The algorithm becomes linear for convex polygons. Some results are generalized for d-dimensional polytopes, where 2d points are always sufficient and sometimes necessary to immobilize. When the polytope has vertices in general position d+1 points are sufficient to immobilize.