Related papers: Inglenook Shunting Puzzles
A bottleneck plane perfect matching of a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^2$ is defined to be a perfect non-crossing matching that minimizes the length of the longest edge; the length of this longest edge is known as {\em bottleneck}. The…
The aircraft routing problem is one of the most studied problems of operations research applied to aircraft management. It involves assigning flights to aircraft while ensuring regular visits to maintenance bases. This paper examines two…
A famous (and hard) chess problem asks what is the maximum number of safe squares possible in placing $n$ queens on an $n\times n$ board. We examine related problems from placing $n$ rooks. We prove that as $n\to\infty$, the probability…
This paper explores the problem of unknotting closed braids and classical knots in mathematical knot theory. We apply evolutionary computation methods to learn sequences of moves that simplify knot diagrams, and show that this can be…
An orientation of a grid is called unique sink orientation (USO) if each of its nonempty subgrids has a unique sink. Particularly, the original grid itself has a unique global sink. In this work we investigate the problem of how to find the…
How many shuffles are needed to mix up a deck of cards? This question may be answered in the language of a random walk on the symmetric group, $S_{52}$. This generalises neatly to the study of random walks on finite groups, themselves a…
In this paper I present a conjecture for a recursive algorithm that finds each permutation of combining two sets of objects (AKA the Shuffle Product). This algorithm provides an efficient way to navigate this problem, as each atomic…
Given a set of coins arranged in a line, we remove heads-up coins one at a time and flip any adjacent coins after each removal. The coin-removal problem is to determine for which arrangements of coins it is possible to remove all of the…
Jigsaw puzzle solving is an intriguing problem which has been explored in computer vision for decades. This paper focuses on a specific variant of the problem - solving puzzles with eroded boundaries. Such erosion makes the problem…
The task of organizing a shuffled set of sentences into a coherent text has been used to evaluate a machine's understanding of causal and temporal relations. We formulate the sentence ordering task as a conditional text-to-marker generation…
Tetravex is a widely played one person computer game in which you are given $n^2$ unit tiles, each edge of which is labelled with a number. The objective is to place each tile within a $n$ by $n$ square such that all neighbouring edges are…
This paper proves a corner occupying theorem for the two-dimensional integral rectangle packing problem, stating that if it is possible to orthogonally place n arbitrarily given integral rectangles into an integral rectangular container…
Given a set $P$ of $n$ red and blue points in the plane, a \emph{planar bichromatic spanning tree} of $P$ is a spanning tree of $P$, such that each edge connects between a red and a blue point, and no two edges intersect. In the bottleneck…
We consider the recently introduced knotting-unknotting game, in which two players take turns resolving crossings in a knot diagram which initially is missing all its crossing information. Once the knot is fully resolved, the winner is…
Bounding volumes are an established concept in computer graphics and vision tasks but have seen little change since their early inception. In this work, we study the use of neural networks as bounding volumes. Our key observation is that…
Rescheduling problems arise in a variety of situations where a previously planned schedule needs to be adjusted to deal with unforeseen events. A common problem is the arrival of new orders, i.e. jobs, which have to be integrated into the…
Inspired by a common technique for shuffling a deck of cards on a table without riffling, we formalize the pile shuffle and investigate its capabilities as a sorting device. Our study is novel in that we consider pile shuffle in three…
The problem of searching a polygonal region for an unpredictably moving intruder by a set of stationary guards, each carrying an orientable laser, is known as the Searchlight Scheduling Problem. Determining the computational complexity of…
Pinwheel Scheduling is a fundamental scheduling problem, in which each task $i$ is associated with a positive integer $d_i$, and the objective is to schedule one task per time slot, ensuring each task perpetually appears at least once in…
Two geometric spaces are in the same topological class if they are related by certain geometric deformations. We propose machine learning methods that automate learning of topological invariance and apply it in the context of knot theory,…