Convex Hulls in Polygonal Domains

We study generalizations of convex hulls to polygonal domains with holes. Convexity in Euclidean space is based on the notion of shortest paths, which are straight-line segments. In a polygonal domain, shortest paths are polygonal paths called geodesics. One possible generalization of convex hulls is based on the "rubber band" conception of the convex hull boundary as a shortest curve that encloses a given set of sites. However, it is NP-hard to compute such a curve in a general polygonal domain. Hence, we focus on a different, more direct generalization of convexity, where a set X is geodesically convex if it contains all geodesics between every pair of points x,y in X. The corresponding geodesic convex hull presents a few surprises, and turns out to behave quite differently compared to the classic Euclidean setting or to the geodesic hull inside a simple polygon. We describe a class of geometric objects that suffice to represent geodesic convex hulls of sets of sites, and characterize which such domains are geodesically convex. Using such a representation we present an algorithm to construct the geodesic convex hull of a set of O(n) sites in a polygonal domain with a total of n vertices and h holes in O(n^3h^{3+epsilon}) time, for any constant epsilon > 0

Approximate Euclidean shortest paths in polygonal domains

Given a set $\mathcal{P}$ of $h$ pairwise disjoint simple polygonal obstacles in $\mathbb{R}^2$ defined with $n$ vertices, we compute a sketch $\Omega$ of $\mathcal{P}$ whose size is independent of $n$, depending only on $h$ and the input parameter $\epsilon$. We utilize $\Omega$ to compute a $(1+\epsilon)$-approximate geodesic shortest path between the two given points in $O(n + h((\lg{n}) + (\lg{h})^{1+\delta} + (\frac{1}{\epsilon}\lg{\frac{h}{\epsilon}})))$ time. Here, $\epsilon$ is a user parameter, and $\delta$ is a small positive constant (resulting from the time for triangulating the free space of $\cal P$ using the algorithm in \cite{journals/ijcga/Bar-YehudaC94}). Moreover, we devise a $(2+\epsilon)$-approximation algorithm to answer two-point Euclidean distance queries for the case of convex polygonal obstacles.Comment: a few updates; accepted to ISAAC 201

Computing a rectilinear shortest path amid splinegons in plane

We reduce the problem of computing a rectilinear shortest path between two given points s and t in the splinegonal domain \calS to the problem of computing a rectilinear shortest path between two points in the polygonal domain. As part of this, we define a polygonal domain \calP from \calS and transform a rectilinear shortest path computed in \calP to a path between s and t amid splinegon obstacles in \calS. When \calS comprises of h pairwise disjoint splinegons with a total of n vertices, excluding the time to compute a rectilinear shortest path amid polygons in \calP, our reduction algorithm takes O(n + h \lg{n}) time. For the special case of \calS comprising of concave-in splinegons, we have devised another algorithm in which the reduction procedure does not rely on the structures used in the algorithm to compute a rectilinear shortest path in polygonal domain. As part of these, we have characterized few of the properties of rectilinear shortest paths amid splinegons which could be of independent interest

Two-Dimensional Pursuit-Evasion in a Compact Domain with Piecewise Analytic Boundary

In a pursuit-evasion game, a team of pursuers attempt to capture an evader. The players alternate turns, move with equal speed, and have full information about the state of the game. We consider the most restictive capture condition: a pursuer must become colocated with the evader to win the game. We prove two general results about pursuit-evasion games in topological spaces. First, we show that one pursuer has a winning strategy in any CAT(0) space under this restrictive capture criterion. This complements a result of Alexander, Bishop and Ghrist, who provide a winning strategy for a game with positive capture radius. Second, we consider the game played in a compact domain in Euclidean two-space with piecewise analytic boundary and arbitrary Euler characteristic. We show that three pursuers always have a winning strategy by extending recent work of Bhadauria, Klein, Isler and Suri from polygonal environments to our more general setting.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure