5 research outputs found
Walking Through Waypoints
We initiate the study of a fundamental combinatorial problem: Given a
capacitated graph , find a shortest walk ("route") from a source to a destination that includes all vertices specified by a set
: the \emph{waypoints}. This waypoint routing problem
finds immediate applications in the context of modern networked distributed
systems. Our main contribution is an exact polynomial-time algorithm for graphs
of bounded treewidth. We also show that if the number of waypoints is
logarithmically bounded, exact polynomial-time algorithms exist even for
general graphs. Our two algorithms provide an almost complete characterization
of what can be solved exactly in polynomial-time: we show that more general
problems (e.g., on grid graphs of maximum degree 3, with slightly more
waypoints) are computationally intractable
Walking Through Waypoints
We initiate the study of a fundamental combinatorial problem: Given a capacitated graph G = (V, E), find a shortest walk (route) from a source s. V to a destination t. V that includes all vertices specified by a set WP. V : the waypoints. This Waypoint Routing Problem finds immediate applications in the context of modern networked systems. Our main contribution is an exact polynomial-time algorithm for graphs of bounded treewidth. We also show that if the number of waypoints is logarithmically bounded, exact polynomial-time algorithms exist even for general graphs. Our two algorithms provide an almost complete characterization of what can be solved exactly in polynomial time: we show that more general problems (e.g., on grid graphs of maximum degree 3, with slightly more waypoints) are computationally intractable