A convex partition of a point set P in the plane is a planar partition of the convex hull of P with empty convex polygons or internal faces whose extreme points belong to P. In a convex partition, the union of the internal faces give the convex hull of P and the interiors of the polygons are pairwise disjoint. Moreover, no polygon is allowed to contain a point of P in its interior. The problem is to find a convex partition based on the minimum number of internal faces. The problem has been shown to be NP-Hard and was recently used in the CG:SHOP Challenge 2020. We propose a new integer linear programming (IP) formulation that considerably improves over the existing one. It relies on the representation of faces as opposed to segments and points. A number of geometric properties are used to strengthen it. Data sets of 100 points are easily solved to optimality and the lower bounds provided by the model can be computed up to 300 points.
This paper presents a counterexample for the approximation algorithm proposed by Durocher and Mehrabi [1] for the general problem of finding a rectangular partition of a rectilinear polygon with minimum stabbing number.
We investigate the problem of partitioning a rectilinear polygon $P$ with $n$ vertices and no holes % with no holes into rectangles using disjoint line segments drawn inside $P$ under two optimality criteria. In the minimum ink partition, the total length of the line segments drawn inside $P$ is minimized. We present an $O(n^3)$-time algorithm using $O(n^2)$ space that returns a minimum ink partition of $P$. In the thick partition, the minimum side length over all resulting rectangles is maximized. We present an $O(n^3 \log^2{n})$-time algorithm using $O(n^3)$ space that returns a thick partit…
We study the problem of decomposing (i.e. partitioning and covering) polygons into components that are $α$-fat, which means that the aspect ratio of each subpolygon is at most $α$. We consider decompositions without Steiner points. We present a polynomial-time algorithm for simple polygons that finds the minimum $α$ such that an $α$-fat partition exists. Furthermore, we show that finding an $α$-fat partition or covering with minimum cardinality is NP-hard for polygons with holes.
In this paper, we characterize planar point sets that can be partitioned into disjoint polygons of arbitrarily specified sizes. We provide an algorithm to construct such a partition, if it exists, in polynomial time. We show that this problem is equivalent to finding a specified $2$-factor in the visibility graph of the point set. The characterization for the case where all cycles have length $3$ also translates to finding a $K_3$-factor of the visibility graph of the point set. We show that the generalized problem of finding a $K_k$-factor of the visibility graph of a given point set for $k \…
We explore optimal circular nonconvex partitions of regular k-gons. The circularity of a polygon is measured by its aspect ratio: the ratio of the radii of the smallest circumscribing circle to the largest inscribed disk. An optimal circular partition minimizes the maximum ratio over all pieces in the partition. We show that the equilateral triangle has an optimal 4-piece nonconvex partition, the square an optimal 13-piece nonconvex partition, and the pentagon has an optimal nonconvex partition with more than 20 thousand pieces. For hexagons and beyond, we provide a general algorithm that appr…
A greedily routable region (GRR) is a closed subset of $\mathbb R^2$, in which each destination point can be reached from each starting point by choosing the direction with maximum reduction of the distance to the destination in each point of the path. Recently, Tan and Kermarrec proposed a geographic routing protocol for dense wireless sensor networks based on decomposing the network area into a small number of interior-disjoint GRRs. They showed that minimum decomposition is NP-hard for polygons with holes. We consider minimum GRR decomposition for plane straight-line drawings of graphs. Her…
This paper addresses the problem of tracking mobile intruders in a polygonal environment. We assume that a team of diagonal guards is deployed inside the polygon to provide mobile coverage. First, we formulate the problem of tracking a mobile intruder inside a polygonal environment as a multi-robot task allocation (MRTA) problem. Leveraging on guard deployment strategies in art gallery problems for mobile coverage, we show that the problem of finding the minimum speed of guards to persistently track a single mobile intruder is NP-hard. Next, for a given maximum speed of the intruder and the gu…
Given a set of disjoint simple polygons $σ_1, \ldots, σ_n$, of total complexity $N$, consider a convexification process that repeatedly replaces a polygon by its convex hull, and any two (by now convex) polygons that intersect by their common convex hull. This process continues until no pair of polygons intersect. We show that this process has a unique output, which is a cover of the input polygons by a set of disjoint convex polygons, of total minimum area. Furthermore, we present a near linear time algorithm for computing this partition. The more general problem of covering a set of $N$ segm…
Given a set of sites in a simple polygon, a geodesic Voronoi diagram of the sites partitions the polygon into regions based on distances to sites under the geodesic metric. We present algorithms for computing the geodesic nearest-point, higher-order and farthest-point Voronoi diagrams of m point sites in a simple n-gon, which improve the best known ones for m <= n/ polylog n. Moreover, the algorithms for the geodesic nearest-point and farthest-point Voronoi diagrams are optimal for m <= n/ polylog n. This partially answers a question posed by Mitchell in the Handbook of Computational Geometry.
The point inclusion tests for polygons, in other words the point-in-polygon (PIP) algorithms, are fundamental tools for many scientific fields related to computational geometry, and they have been studied for a long time. The PIP algorithms get direct or indirect geometric definition of a polygonal entity, and validate its containment of a given point. The PIP algorithms, which are working directly on the geometric entities, derive linear boundary definitions for the edges of the polygons. Moreover, almost all direct test methods rely on the two-point form of the line equation to partition the…
Let $P$ be a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^2$. For a given positive integer $w<n$, our objective is to find a set $C \subset P$ of points, such that $CH(P\setminus C)$ has the smallest number of vertices and $C$ has at most $n-w$ points. We discuss the $O(wn^3)$ time dynamic programming algorithm for monotone decomposable functions (MDF) introduced for finding a class of optimal convex $w$-gons, with vertices chosen from $P$, and improve it to $O(n^3 \log w)$ time, which gives an improvement to the existing algorithm for MDFs if their input is a convex polygon.
Covering and Partitioning Complex Objects with Small Pieces
University of Copenhagen（哥本哈根大学）；Dartmouth College（达特茅斯学院）；Queens College CUNY（纽约市立大学皇后学院）；Stony Brook University（石溪大学）；Universtity Hamburg（汉堡大学）；Linköping Univeristy（林雪平大学）
Given a set of point sites in a simple polygon, the geodesic farthest-point Voronoi diagram partitions the polygon into cells, at most one cell per site, such that every point in a cell has the same farthest site with respect to the geodesic metric. We present an $O(n\log\log n+m\log m)$- time algorithm to compute the geodesic farthest-point Voronoi diagram of $m$ point sites in a simple $n$-gon. This improves the previously best known algorithm by Aronov et al. [Discrete Comput. Geom. 9(3):217-255, 1993]. In the case that all point sites are on the boundary of the simple polygon, we can compu…
In this paper, we consider the problem of partitioning a polygon into a set of connected disjoint sub-polygons, each of which covers an area of a specific size. The work is motivated by terrain covering applications in robotics, where the goal is to find a set of efficient plans for a team of heterogeneous robots to cover a given area. Within this application, solving a polygon partitioning problem is an essential stepping stone. Unlike previous work, the problem formulation proposed in this paper also considers a compactness metric of the generated sub-polygons, in addition to the area size c…
We address the following problem: Given a simple polygon $P$ with $n$ vertices and two points $s$ and $t$ inside it, find a minimum link path between them such that a given target point $q$ is visible from at least one point on the path. The method is based on partitioning a portion of $P$ into a number of faces of equal link distance from a source point. This partitioning is essentially a shortest path map (SPM). In this paper, we present an optimal algorithm with $O(n)$ time bound, which is the same as the time complexity of the standard minimum link paths problem.
Motivated by the $k$-center problem in location analysis, we consider the \emph{polygon burning} (PB) problem: Given a polygonal domain $P$ with $h$ holes and $n$ vertices, find a set $S$ of $k$ vertices of $P$ that minimizes the maximum geodesic distance from any point in $P$ to its nearest vertex in $S$. Alternatively, viewing each vertex in $S$ as a site to start a fire, the goal is to select $S$ such that fires burning simultaneously and uniformly from $S$, restricted to $P$, consume $P$ entirely as quickly as possible. We prove that PB is NP-hard when $k$ is arbitrary. We show that the di…
The partition of a problem into smaller sub-problems satisfying certain properties is often a key ingredient in the design of divide-and-conquer algorithms. For questions related to location, the partition problem can be modeled, in geometric terms, as finding a subdivision of a planar map -- which represents, say, a geographical area -- into regions subject to certain conditions while optimizing some objective function. In this paper, we investigate one of these geometric problems known as the Minimum Convex Partition Problem (MCPP). A convex partition of a point set $P$ in the plane is a sub…
Motivated by a new way of visualizing hypergraphs, we study the following problem. Consider a rectangular grid and a set of colors $χ$. Each cell $s$ in the grid is assigned a subset of colors $χ_s \subseteq χ$ and should be partitioned such that for each color $c\in χ_s$ at least one piece in the cell is identified with $c$. Cells assigned the empty color set remain white. We focus on the case where $χ= \{\text{red},\text{blue}\}$. Is it possible to partition each cell in the grid such that the unions of the resulting red and blue pieces form two connected polygons? We analyze the combinatori…
We study a natural extension to the well-known convex hull problem by introducing multiplicity: if we are given a set of convex polygons, and we are allowed to partition the set into multiple components and take the convex hull of each individual component, what is the minimum total sum of the perimeters of the convex hulls? We show why this problem is intriguing, and then introduce a novel algorithm with a run-time cubic in the total number of vertices. In the case that the input polygons are disjoint, we show an optimization that achieves a run-time that, in most cases, is cubic in the total…
We consider methods for finding a simple polygon of minimum (Min-Area) or maximum (Max-Area) possible area for a given set of points in the plane. Both problems are known to be NP-hard; at the center of the recent CG Challenge, practical methods have received considerable attention. However, previous methods focused on heuristic methods, with no proof of optimality. We develop exact methods, based on a combination of geometry and integer programming. As a result, we are able to solve instances of up to n=25 points to provable optimality. While this extends the range of solvable instances by a …
We provide exact and approximation methods for solving a geometric relaxation of the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) that occurs in curve reconstruction: for a given set of vertices in the plane, the problem Minimum Perimeter Polygon (MPP) asks for a (not necessarily simply connected) polygon with shortest possible boundary length. Even though the closely related problem of finding a minimum cycle cover is polynomially solvable by matching techniques, we prove how the topological structure of a polygon leads to NP-hardness of the MPP. On the positive side, we show how to achieve a constant-fa…
The polygon retrieval problem on points is the problem of preprocessing a set of $n$ points on the plane, so that given a polygon query, the subset of points lying inside it can be reported efficiently. It is of great interest in areas such as Computer Graphics, CAD applications, Spatial Databases and GIS developing tasks. In this paper we study the problem of canonical $k$-vertex polygon queries on the plane. A canonical $k$-vertex polygon query always meets the following specific property: a point retrieval query can be transformed into a linear number (with respect to the number of vertices…
The Maximum Weight Independent Set of Polygons problem is a fundamental problem in computational geometry. Given a set of weighted polygons in the 2-dimensional plane, the goal is to find a set of pairwise non-overlapping polygons with maximum total weight. Due to its wide range of applications, the MWISP problem and its special cases have been extensively studied both in the approximation algorithms and the computational geometry community. Despite a lot of research, its general case is not well-understood. Currently the best known polynomial time algorithm achieves an approximation ratio of …
The chosen tool of this thesis is an extremal type approach. The lesson drawn by the theorems proved in the thesis is that surprisingly small compromise is necessary on the efficacy of the solutions to make the approach work. The problems studied have several connections to other subjects and practical applications. The first part of the thesis is concerned with orthogonal art galleries. A sharp extremal bound is proved on partitioning orthogonal polygons into at most 8-vertex polygons using established techniques in the field of art gallery problems. This fills in the gap between already know…
