1,492 research outputs found
Approximation Schemes for Partitioning: Convex Decomposition and Surface Approximation
We revisit two NP-hard geometric partitioning problems - convex decomposition
and surface approximation. Building on recent developments in geometric
separators, we present quasi-polynomial time algorithms for these problems with
improved approximation guarantees.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure
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On a linear program for minimum-weight triangulation
Minimum-weight triangulation (MWT) is NP-hard. It has a polynomial-time constant-factor approximation algorithm, and a variety of effective polynomial-time heuristics that, for many instances, can find the exact MWT. Linear programs (LPs) for MWT are well-studied, but previously no connection was known between any LP and any approximation algorithm or heuristic for MWT. Here we show the first such connections: For an LP formulation due to Dantzig, Hoffman, and Hu [Math. Programming, 31 (1985), pp. 1-14], (i) the integrality gap is constant, and (ii) given any instance, if the aforementioned heuristics find the MWT, then so does the LP. © 2014 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
On a Linear Program for Minimum-Weight Triangulation
Minimum-weight triangulation (MWT) is NP-hard. It has a polynomial-time
constant-factor approximation algorithm, and a variety of effective polynomial-
time heuristics that, for many instances, can find the exact MWT. Linear
programs (LPs) for MWT are well-studied, but previously no connection was known
between any LP and any approximation algorithm or heuristic for MWT. Here we
show the first such connections: for an LP formulation due to Dantzig et al.
(1985): (i) the integrality gap is bounded by a constant; (ii) given any
instance, if the aforementioned heuristics find the MWT, then so does the LP.Comment: To appear in SICOMP. Extended abstract appeared in SODA 201
Minimum-weight triangulation is NP-hard
A triangulation of a planar point set S is a maximal plane straight-line
graph with vertex set S. In the minimum-weight triangulation (MWT) problem, we
are looking for a triangulation of a given point set that minimizes the sum of
the edge lengths. We prove that the decision version of this problem is
NP-hard. We use a reduction from PLANAR-1-IN-3-SAT. The correct working of the
gadgets is established with computer assistance, using dynamic programming on
polygonal faces, as well as the beta-skeleton heuristic to certify that certain
edges belong to the minimum-weight triangulation.Comment: 45 pages (including a technical appendix of 13 pages), 28 figures.
This revision contains a few improvements in the expositio
New results on stabbing segments with a polygon
We consider a natural variation of the concept of stabbing a set of segments with a simple polygon: a segment s is stabbed by a simple polygon P if at least one endpoint of s is contained in P, and a segment set S is stabbed by P if P stabs every element of S. Given a segment set S, we study the problem of finding a simple polygon P stabbing S in a way that some measure of P (such as area or perimeter) is optimized. We show that if the elements of S are pairwise disjoint, the problem can be solved in polynomial time. In particular, this solves an open problem posed by Loftier and van Kreveld [Algorithmica 56(2), 236-269 (2010)] [16] about finding a maximum perimeter convex hull for a set of imprecise points modeled as line segments. Our algorithm can also be extended to work for a more general problem, in which instead of segments, the set S consists of a collection of point sets with pairwise disjoint convex hulls. We also prove that for general segments our stabbing problem is NP-hard. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Cutting Polygons into Small Pieces with Chords: Laser-Based Localization
Motivated by indoor localization by tripwire lasers, we study the problem of cutting a polygon into small-size pieces, using the chords of the polygon. Several versions are considered, depending on the definition of the "size" of a piece. In particular, we consider the area, the diameter, and the radius of the largest inscribed circle as a measure of the size of a piece. We also consider different objectives, either minimizing the maximum size of a piece for a given number of chords, or minimizing the number of chords that achieve a given size threshold for the pieces. We give hardness results for polygons with holes and approximation algorithms for multiple variants of the problem
Flip Distance Between Triangulations of a Simple Polygon is NP-Complete
Let T be a triangulation of a simple polygon. A flip in T is the operation of
removing one diagonal of T and adding a different one such that the resulting
graph is again a triangulation. The flip distance between two triangulations is
the smallest number of flips required to transform one triangulation into the
other. For the special case of convex polygons, the problem of determining the
shortest flip distance between two triangulations is equivalent to determining
the rotation distance between two binary trees, a central problem which is
still open after over 25 years of intensive study. We show that computing the
flip distance between two triangulations of a simple polygon is NP-complete.
This complements a recent result that shows APX-hardness of determining the
flip distance between two triangulations of a planar point set.Comment: Accepted versio
Approximate Euclidean shortest paths in polygonal domains
Given a set of pairwise disjoint simple polygonal obstacles
in defined with vertices, we compute a sketch of
whose size is independent of , depending only on and the
input parameter . We utilize to compute a
-approximate geodesic shortest path between the two given points
in time. Here, is a user
parameter, and is a small positive constant (resulting from the time
for triangulating the free space of using the algorithm in
\cite{journals/ijcga/Bar-YehudaC94}). Moreover, we devise a
-approximation algorithm to answer two-point Euclidean distance
queries for the case of convex polygonal obstacles.Comment: a few updates; accepted to ISAAC 201
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