Packing odd TT-joins with at most two terminals

Take a graph $G$, an edge subset $\Sigma\subseteq E(G)$, and a set of terminals $T\subseteq V(G)$ where $|T|$ is even. The triple $(G,\Sigma,T)$ is called a signed graft. A $T$-join is odd if it contains an odd number of edges from $\Sigma$. Let $\nu$ be the maximum number of edge-disjoint odd $T$-joins. A signature is a set of the form $\Sigma\triangle \delta(U)$ where $U\subseteq V(G)$ and $|U\cap T)$ is even. Let $\tau$ be the minimum cardinality a $T$-cut or a signature can achieve. Then $\nu\leq \tau$ and we say that $(G,\Sigma,T)$ packs if equality holds here. We prove that $(G,\Sigma,T)$ packs if the signed graft is Eulerian and it excludes two special non-packing minors. Our result confirms the Cycling Conjecture for the class of clutters of odd $T$-joins with at most two terminals. Corollaries of this result include, the characterizations of weakly and evenly bipartite graphs, packing two-commodity paths, packing $T$-joins with at most four terminals, and a new result on covering edges with cuts.Comment: extended abstract appeared in IPCO 2014 (under the different title "the cycling property for the clutter of odd st-walks"

On shortest TT-joins and packing TT-cuts

We give a class of graphs with the property that for each even set T of nodes in G the minimum length of a T-join is equal to the maximum number of pairwise edge disjoint T-cuts. Our class contains the bipartite and the series-parallel graphs for which this property was derived earlier by Seymour

Signed graphs, regular matroids, grafts

Mathematics

Who witnesses The Witness? Finding witnesses in The Witness is hard and sometimes impossible

We analyze the computational complexity of the many types of pencil-and-paper-style puzzles featured in the 2016 puzzle video game The Witness. In all puzzles, the goal is to draw a simple path in a rectangular grid graph from a start vertex to a destination vertex. The different puzzle types place different constraints on the path: preventing some edges from being visited (broken edges); forcing some edges or vertices to be visited (hexagons); forcing some cells to have certain numbers of incident path edges (triangles); or forcing the regions formed by the path to be partially monochromatic (squares), have exactly two special cells (stars), or be singly covered by given shapes (polyominoes) and/or negatively counting shapes (antipolyominoes). We show that any one of these clue types (except the first) is enough to make path finding NP-complete ("witnesses exist but are hard to find"), even for rectangular boards. Furthermore, we show that a final clue type (antibody), which necessarily "cancels" the effect of another clue in the same region, makes path finding $\Sigma_2$-complete ("witnesses do not exist"), even with a single antibody (combined with many anti/polyominoes), and the problem gets no harder with many antibodies. On the positive side, we give a polynomial-time algorithm for monomino clues, by reducing to hexagon clues on the boundary of the puzzle, even in the presence of broken edges, and solving "subset Hamiltonian path" for terminals on the boundary of an embedded planar graph in polynomial time.Comment: 72 pages, 59 figures. Revised proof of Lemma 3.5. A short version of this paper appeared at the 9th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2018

Clean clutters and dyadic fractional packings

A vector is dyadic if each of its entries is a dyadic rational number, i.e., an integer multiple of 1 2k for some nonnegative integer k. We prove that every clean clutter with a covering number of at least two has a dyadic fractional packing of value two. This result is best possible for there exist clean clutters with a covering number of three and no dyadic fractional packing of value three. Examples of clean clutters include ideal clutters, binary clutters, and clutters without an intersecting minor. Our proof is constructive and leads naturally to an albeit exponential algorithm. We improve the running time to quasi-polynomial in the rank of the input, and to polynomial in the binary cas

Single Commodity Flow Algorithms for Lifts of Graphic and Cographic Matroids

Consider a binary matroid M given by its matrix representation. We show that if M is a lift of a graphic or a cographic matroid, then in polynomial time we can either solve the single commodity flow problem for M or find an obstruction for which the Max-Flow Min-Cut relation does not hold. The key tool is an algorithmic version of Lehman's Theorem for the set covering polyhedron

Visual Inspection Algorithms for Printed Circuit Board Patterns A SURVEY

The importance of the inspection process has been magnified by the requirements of the modern manufacturing environment. In electronics mass-production manufacturing facilities, an attempt is often made to achieve 100 % quality assurance of all parts, subassemblies, and finished goods. A variety of approaches for automated visual inspection of printed circuits have been reported over the last two decades. In this survey, algorithms and techniques for the automated inspection of printed circuit boards are examined. A classification tree for these algorithms is presented and the algorithms are grouped according to this classification. This survey concentrates mainly on image analysis and fault detection strategies, these also include the state-of-the-art techniques. Finally, limitations of current inspection systems are summarized