Related papers: The grasshopper problem
Motivated by a problem posed by Aldous, our goal is to find the maximal-entropy win-martingale: In a sports game between two teams, the chance the home team wins is initially $x_0 \in (0,1)$ and finally 0 or 1. As an idealization we take a…
Motivated by a potential application in economics, we investigate a simple dynamical scheme to produce planted solutions in optimization problems with continuous variables. We consider the perceptron model as a prototypical model. Starting…
This paper studies the underlying combinatorial structure of a class of object rearrangement problems, which appear frequently in applications. The problems involve multiple, similar-geometry objects placed on a flat, horizontal surface,…
We derive a sharp scaling law for deviations of edge-isoperimetric sets in the lattice $\mathbb Z^d$ from the limiting Wulff shape in arbitrary dimensions. As the number $n$ of elements diverges, we prove that the symmetric difference to…
We present filling as a new type of spatial subdivision problem that is related to covering and packing. Filling addresses the optimal placement of overlapping objects lying entirely inside an arbitrary shape so as to cover the most…
In the standard ball-in-bins experiment, a well-known scheme is to sample $d$ bins independently and uniformly at random and put the ball into the least loaded bin. It can be shown that this scheme yields a maximum load of $\log\log n/\log…
We study an optimal control problem arising from a generalization of rock-paper-scissors in which the number of strategies may be selected from any positive odd number greater than 1 and in which the payoff to the winner is controlled by a…
We consider the following geometric optimization problem: find a convex polygon of maximum area contained in a given simple polygon $P$ with $n$ vertices. We give a randomized near-linear-time $(1-\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm for…
We analyze the impact of two equal billiard balls in three ideal situations: when the balls freely slide on the plane of the billiard, when they roll without sliding and when one of them freely slides and the other rolls. In all the cases…
We investigate the following question: what is the set of unit volume which can be best irrigated starting from a single source at the origin, in the sense of branched transport? We may formulate this question as a shape optimization…
Nonlinear dynamics of a bouncing ball moving vertically in a gravitational field and colliding with a moving limiter is considered and the Poincar\'e map, describing evolution from an impact to the next impact, is described. Displacement of…
Bird migration is an adaptive behavior ultimately aiming at optimizing survival and reproductive success. We propose an optimal switching model to study bird migration, where birds' migration behaviors can be efficiently modeled as…
We study fermions in a lattice, with on-site and nearest neighbor attractive interactions between two spin species. We consider two geometries: both spins in a triangular lattice, and a mixed geometry with up-spins in honeycomb and…
In water-limited regions, competition for water resources results in the formation of vegetation patterns; on sloped terrain, one finds that the vegetation typically aligns in stripes or arcs. We consider a two-component…
Terrain geometry is, in general, non-smooth, non-linear, non-convex, and, if perceived through a robot-centric visual unit, appears partially occluded and noisy. This work presents the complete control pipeline capable of handling the…
In this article, we study the problem of selecting a grasping pose on the surface of an object to be manipulated by considering three post-grasp objectives. These objectives include (i) kinematic manipulation capability, (ii) torque effort…
The Moving Sofa Problem, formally proposed by Leo Moser in 1966, seeks to determine the largest area of a two-dimensional shape that can navigate through an $L$-shaped corridor with unit width. The current best lower bound is about 2.2195,…
Rearranging densely packed tabletop objects is challenging when parallel-gripper picks are infeasible without sufficient clearance around an object. This work studies the problem characteristics for practically motivated settings with…
We propose a geometric model for optimal shape-change-induced motions of slender locomotors, e.g., snakes slithering on sand. In these scenarios, the motion of a body in world coordinates is completely determined by the sequence of shapes…
Considering the optimal alignment of two i.i.d. random sequences of length $n$, we show that when the scoring function is chosen randomly, almost surely the empirical distribution of aligned letter pairs in all optimal alignments converges…