In this paper we study the problem of augmenting a planar graph such that it
becomes 3-regular and remains planar. We show that it is NP-hard to decide
whether such an augmentation exists. On the other hand, we give an efficient
algorithm for the variant of the problem where the input graph has a fixed
planar (topological) embedding that has to be preserved by the augmentation. We
further generalize this algorithm to test efficiently whether a 3-regular
planar augmentation exists that additionally makes the input graph connected or
biconnected. If the input graph should become even triconnected, we show that
the existence of a 3-regular planar augmentation is again NP-hard to decide.Comment: accepted at ISAAC 201