175 research outputs found
Trains, Games, and Complexity: 0/1/2-Player Motion Planning through Input/Output Gadgets
We analyze the computational complexity of motion planning through local
"input/output" gadgets with separate entrances and exits, and a subset of
allowed traversals from entrances to exits, each of which changes the state of
the gadget and thereby the allowed traversals. We study such gadgets in the 0-,
1-, and 2-player settings, in particular extending past
motion-planning-through-gadgets work to 0-player games for the first time, by
considering "branchless" connections between gadgets that route every gadget's
exit to a unique gadget's entrance. Our complexity results include containment
in L, NL, P, NP, and PSPACE; as well as hardness for NL, P, NP, and PSPACE. We
apply these results to show PSPACE-completeness for certain mechanics in
Factorio, [the Sequence], and a restricted version of Trainyard, improving
prior results. This work strengthens prior results on switching graphs and
reachability switching games.Comment: 37 pages, 36 figure
Counting Popular Matchings in House Allocation Problems
We study the problem of counting the number of popular matchings in a given
instance. A popular matching instance consists of agents A and houses H, where
each agent ranks a subset of houses according to their preferences. A matching
is an assignment of agents to houses. A matching M is more popular than
matching M' if the number of agents that prefer M to M' is more than the number
of people that prefer M' to M. A matching M is called popular if there exists
no matching more popular than M. McDermid and Irving gave a poly-time algorithm
for counting the number of popular matchings when the preference lists are
strictly ordered.
We first consider the case of ties in preference lists. Nasre proved that the
problem of counting the number of popular matching is #P-hard when there are
ties. We give an FPRAS for this problem.
We then consider the popular matching problem where preference lists are
strictly ordered but each house has a capacity associated with it. We give a
switching graph characterization of popular matchings in this case. Such
characterizations were studied earlier for the case of strictly ordered
preference lists (McDermid and Irving) and for preference lists with ties
(Nasre). We use our characterization to prove that counting popular matchings
in capacitated case is #P-hard
Analysis of Boolean Equation Systems through Structure Graphs
We analyse the problem of solving Boolean equation systems through the use of
structure graphs. The latter are obtained through an elegant set of
Plotkin-style deduction rules. Our main contribution is that we show that
equation systems with bisimilar structure graphs have the same solution. We
show that our work conservatively extends earlier work, conducted by Keiren and
Willemse, in which dependency graphs were used to analyse a subclass of Boolean
equation systems, viz., equation systems in standard recursive form. We
illustrate our approach by a small example, demonstrating the effect of
simplifying an equation system through minimisation of its structure graph
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