English

Polygon Containment and Translational Min-Hausdorff-Distance between Segment Sets are 3SUM-Hard

Computational Geometry 2025-12-17 v1

Abstract

The 3SUM problem represents a class of problems conjectured to require Ω(n2)\Omega (n^2) time to solve, where nn is the size of the input. Given two polygons PP and QQ in the plane, we show that some variants of the decision problem, whether there exists a transformation of PP that makes it contained in QQ, are 3SUM-Hard. In the first variant PP and QQ are any simple polygons and the allowed transformations are translations only; in the second and third variants both polygons are convex and we allow either rotations only or any rigid motion. We also show that finding the translation in the plane that minimizes the Hausdorff distance between two segment sets is 3SUM-Hard.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.14184,
  title  = {Polygon Containment and Translational Min-Hausdorff-Distance between Segment Sets are 3SUM-Hard},
  author = {Gill Barequet and Sariel Har-Peled},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.14184},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Appeared in SODA 1999, and IJCGA