2,940 research outputs found
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
Approximating the Maximum Overlap of Polygons under Translation
Let and be two simple polygons in the plane of total complexity ,
each of which can be decomposed into at most convex parts. We present an
-approximation algorithm, for finding the translation of ,
which maximizes its area of overlap with . Our algorithm runs in
time, where is a constant that depends only on and .
This suggest that for polygons that are "close" to being convex, the problem
can be solved (approximately), in near linear time
Bounds on the maximum multiplicity of some common geometric graphs
We obtain new lower and upper bounds for the maximum multiplicity of some
weighted and, respectively, non-weighted common geometric graphs drawn on n
points in the plane in general position (with no three points collinear):
perfect matchings, spanning trees, spanning cycles (tours), and triangulations.
(i) We present a new lower bound construction for the maximum number of
triangulations a set of n points in general position can have. In particular,
we show that a generalized double chain formed by two almost convex chains
admits {\Omega}(8.65^n) different triangulations. This improves the bound
{\Omega}(8.48^n) achieved by the double zig-zag chain configuration studied by
Aichholzer et al.
(ii) We present a new lower bound of {\Omega}(12.00^n) for the number of
non-crossing spanning trees of the double chain composed of two convex chains.
The previous bound, {\Omega}(10.42^n), stood unchanged for more than 10 years.
(iii) Using a recent upper bound of 30^n for the number of triangulations,
due to Sharir and Sheffer, we show that n points in the plane in general
position admit at most O(68.62^n) non-crossing spanning cycles.
(iv) We derive lower bounds for the number of maximum and minimum weighted
geometric graphs (matchings, spanning trees, and tours). We show that the
number of shortest non-crossing tours can be exponential in n. Likewise, we
show that both the number of longest non-crossing tours and the number of
longest non-crossing perfect matchings can be exponential in n. Moreover, we
show that there are sets of n points in convex position with an exponential
number of longest non-crossing spanning trees. For points in convex position we
obtain tight bounds for the number of longest and shortest tours. We give a
combinatorial characterization of the longest tours, which leads to an O(nlog
n) time algorithm for computing them
Searching Polyhedra by Rotating Half-Planes
The Searchlight Scheduling Problem was first studied in 2D polygons, where
the goal is for point guards in fixed positions to rotate searchlights to catch
an evasive intruder. Here the problem is extended to 3D polyhedra, with the
guards now boundary segments who rotate half-planes of illumination. After
carefully detailing the 3D model, several results are established. The first is
a nearly direct extension of the planar one-way sweep strategy using what we
call exhaustive guards, a generalization that succeeds despite there being no
well-defined notion in 3D of planar "clockwise rotation". Next follow two
results: every polyhedron with r>0 reflex edges can be searched by at most r^2
suitably placed guards, whereas just r guards suffice if the polyhedron is
orthogonal. (Minimizing the number of guards to search a given polyhedron is
easily seen to be NP-hard.) Finally we show that deciding whether a given set
of guards has a successful search schedule is strongly NP-hard, and that
deciding if a given target area is searchable at all is strongly PSPACE-hard,
even for orthogonal polyhedra. A number of peripheral results are proved en
route to these central theorems, and several open problems remain for future
work.Comment: 45 pages, 26 figure
A Time-Space Tradeoff for Triangulations of Points in the Plane
In this paper, we consider time-space trade-offs for reporting a triangulation of points in the plane. The goal is to minimize the amount of working space while keeping the total running time small. We present the first multi-pass algorithm on the problem that returns the edges of a triangulation with their adjacency information. This even improves the previously best known random-access algorithm
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