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this survey, we describe this work, show the chronology of developments, and compare current algorithms, including two unpublished versions, in an exhaustive experiment.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

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this survey, we describe this work, show the chronology of developments, and compare current algorithms, including two unpublished versions, in an exhaustive experiment.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

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

On rr-Guarding Thin Orthogonal Polygons

Guarding a polygon with few guards is an old and well-studied problem in computational geometry. Here we consider the following variant: We assume that the polygon is orthogonal and thin in some sense, and we consider a point $p$ to guard a point $q$ if and only if the minimum axis-aligned rectangle spanned by $p$ and $q$ is inside the polygon. A simple proof shows that this problem is NP-hard on orthogonal polygons with holes, even if the polygon is thin. If there are no holes, then a thin polygon becomes a tree polygon in the sense that the so-called dual graph of the polygon is a tree. It was known that finding the minimum set of $r$-guards is polynomial for tree polygons, but the run-time was $\tilde{O}(n^{17})$. We show here that with a different approach the running time becomes linear, answering a question posed by Biedl et al. (SoCG 2011). Furthermore, the approach is much more general, allowing to specify subsets of points to guard and guards to use, and it generalizes to polygons with $h$ holes or thickness $K$, becoming fixed-parameter tractable in $h+K$.Comment: 18 page