Engineering Art Galleries

The Art Gallery Problem is one of the most well-known problems in Computational Geometry, with a rich history in the study of algorithms, complexity, and variants. Recently there has been a surge in experimental work on the problem. In this survey, we describe this work, show the chronology of developments, and compare current algorithms, including two unpublished versions, in an exhaustive experiment. Furthermore, we show what core algorithmic ingredients have led to recent successes

Facets for Art Gallery Problems

The Art Gallery Problem (AGP) asks for placing a minimum number of stationary guards in a polygonal region P, such that all points in P are guarded. The problem is known to be NP-hard, and its inherent continuous structure (with both the set of points that need to be guarded and the set of points that can be used for guarding being uncountably infinite) makes it difficult to apply a straightforward formulation as an Integer Linear Program. We use an iterative primal-dual relaxation approach for solving AGP instances to optimality. At each stage, a pair of LP relaxations for a finite candidate subset of primal covering and dual packing constraints and variables is considered; these correspond to possible guard positions and points that are to be guarded. Particularly useful are cutting planes for eliminating fractional solutions. We identify two classes of facets, based on Edge Cover and Set Cover (SC) inequalities. Solving the separation problem for the latter is NP-complete, but exploiting the underlying geometric structure, we show that large subclasses of fractional SC solutions cannot occur for the AGP. This allows us to separate the relevant subset of facets in polynomial time. We also characterize all facets for finite AGP relaxations with coefficients in {0, 1, 2}. Finally, we demonstrate the practical usefulness of our approach. Our cutting plane technique yields a significant improvement in terms of speed and solution quality due to considerably reduced integrality gaps as compared to the approach by Kr\"oller et al.Comment: 29 pages, 18 figures, 1 tabl

Engineering Art Galleries

The Art Gallery Problem is one of the most well-known problems in Computational Geometry, with a rich history in the study of algorithms, complexity, and variants. Recently there has been a surge in experimental work on the problem. In this survey, we describe this work, show the chronology of developments, and compare current algorithms, including two unpublished versions, in an exhaustive experiment. Furthermore, we show what core algorithmic ingredients have led to recent successes

Rectilinear Link Diameter and Radius in a Rectilinear Polygonal Domain

We study the computation of the diameter and radius under the rectilinear link distance within a rectilinear polygonal domain of $n$ vertices and $h$ holes. We introduce a \emph{graph of oriented distances} to encode the distance between pairs of points of the domain. This helps us transform the problem so that we can search through the candidates more efficiently. Our algorithm computes both the diameter and the radius in $\min \{\,O(n^\omega), O(n^2 + nh \log h + \chi^2)\,\}$ time, where $\omega<2.373$ denotes the matrix multiplication exponent and $\chi\in \Omega(n)\cap O(n^2)$ is the number of edges of the graph of oriented distances. We also provide a faster algorithm for computing the diameter that runs in $O(n^2 \log n)$ time

Resolução do problema da galeria de arte : um método prático e robusto para o posicionamento ótimo de guardas-ponto

Orientadores: Cid Carvalho de Souza, Pedro Jussieu de RezendeDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: Nesta dissertação, apresentamos nossa pesquisa sobre o Problema da Galeria de Arte (AGP), um dos problemas mais estudados em Geometria Computacional. O AGP, que é um problema NP-difícil, consiste em encontrar o número mínimo de guardas suficiente para garantir a cobertura visual de uma galeria de arte representada por um polígono. Na versão do problema tratada neste trabalho, usualmente chamada de Problema da Galeria de Arte com Guardas-Ponto, os guardas podem ser posicionados em qualquer lugar do polígono e o objetivo é cobrir toda a região, que pode ou não conter buracos. Nós estudamos como aplicar conceitos e algoritmos de Geometria Computacional, bem como Técnicas de Programação Inteira, com a finalidade de resolver o AGP de forma exata. Este trabalho culminou na criação de um novo algoritmo para o AGP, cuja ideia é gerar, de forma iterativa, limitantes superiores e inferiores para o problema através da resolução de versões discretizadas do AGP, que são reduzidas a instâncias do Problema de Cobertura de Conjuntos. O algoritmo foi implementado e testado em mais de 2800 instâncias, de diferentes tamanhos e classes. A técnica foi capaz de resolver, em minutos, mais de 90% de todas as instâncias consideradas, incluindo polígonos com milhares de vértices, e ampliou em muito o conjunto de casos para os quais são conhecidas soluções exatas. Até onde sabemos, apesar do extensivo estudo do AGP nas últimas quatro décadas, nenhum outro algoritmo demonstrou a capacidade de resolver o AGP de forma tão eficaz como a técnica aqui descritaAbstract: In this dissertation, we present our research on the Art Gallery Problem (AGP), one of the most investigated problems in Computational Geometry. The AGP, which is a known NP-hard problem, consists in finding the minimum number of guards sufficient to ensure the visibility coverage of an art gallery represented as a polygon. In the version of the problem treated in this work, usually called Art Gallery Problem with Point Guards, the guards can be placed anywhere in the polygon and the objective is to cover the whole region, which may or not have holes. We studied how to apply Computational Geometry concepts and algorithms as well as Integer Programming techniques in order to solve the AGP to optimality. This work culminated in the creation of a new algorithm for the AGP, whose idea is to iteratively generate upper and lower bounds for the problem through the resolution of discretized versions of the AGP, which are reduced to instances of the Set Cover Problem. The algorithm was implemented and tested on more than 2800 instances of different sizes and classes of polygons. The technique was able to solve in minutes more than 90% of all instances considered, including polygons with thousands of vertices, greatly increasing the set of instances for which exact solutions are known. To the best of our knowledge, in spite of the extensive study of the AGP in the last four decades, no other algorithm has shown the ability to solve the AGP as effectively as the one described hereMestradoCiência da ComputaçãoMestre em Ciência da Computaçã

Algorithms for Art Gallery Illumination

We consider a variant of the Art Gallery Problem, where a polygonal region is to be covered with light sources, with light fading over distance. We describe two practical algorithms, one based on a discrete approximation, and another based on nonlinear programming by means of simplex partitioning strategies. For the case where the light positions are given, we describe a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme. For both algorithms we present an experimental evaluation