Related papers: Covering Polygons is Even Harder
Minimum Cost Polygon Overlay (MCPO) is a unique two-dimensional optimization problem that involves the task of covering a polygon shaped area with a series of rectangular shaped panels. This has a number of applications in the construction…
We consider the rank reduction problem for matroids: Given a matroid M and an integer k, find a minimum size subset of elements of M whose removal reduces the rank of M by at least k. When M is a graphical matroid this problem is the…
The input to the NP-hard Point Line Cover problem (PLC) consists of a set $P$ of $n$ points on the plane and a positive integer $k$, and the question is whether there exists a set of at most $k$ lines which pass through all points in $P$. A…
Given a $k$-uniform hyper-graph, the E$k$-Vertex-Cover problem is to find the smallest subset of vertices that intersects every hyper-edge. We present a new multilayered PCP construction that extends the Raz verifier. This enables us to…
We study the problem of Covering Orthogonal Polygons with Rectangles. For polynomial-time algorithms, the best-known approximation factor is $O(\sqrt{\log n})$ when the input polygon may have holes [Kumar and Ramesh, STOC '99, SICOMP '03],…
The Minimum Path Cover (MPC) problem consists of finding a minimum-cardinality set of node-disjoint paths that cover all nodes in a given graph. We explore a variant of the MPC problem on acyclic digraphs (DAGs) where, given a subset of…
The Opaque Cover Problem (OCP), also known as the Beam Detector Problem, is the problem of finding, for a set S in Euclidean space, the minimum-length set F which intersects every straight line passing through S. In spite of its simplicity,…
We devise a polynomial-time algorithm for partitioning a simple polygon $P$ into a minimum number of star-shaped polygons. The question of whether such an algorithm exists has been open for more than four decades [Avis and Toussaint,…
We study the problem of guarding the boundary of a simple polygon with a minimum number of guards such that each guard covers a contiguous portion of the boundary. First, we present a simple greedy algorithm for this problem that returns a…
We prove that the art gallery problem is equivalent under polynomial time reductions to deciding whether a system of polynomial equations over the real numbers has a solution. The art gallery problem is a classical problem in computational…
The vertex cover problem is one of the most important and intensively studied combinatorial optimization problems. Khot and Regev (2003) proved that the problem is NP-hard to approximate within a factor $2 - \epsilon$, assuming the Unique…
A polygon C is an intersecting polygon for a set O of objects in the plane if C intersects each object in O, where the polygon includes its interior. We study the problem of computing the minimum-perimeter intersecting polygon and the…
We prove tight upper bounds for the number of vertices of a simple polygon that is the union or the intersection of two simple polygons with given numbers of convex and concave vertices. The similar question on graphs of the lower (or…
We study the problem of partitioning a polygon into the minimum number of subpolygons using cuts in predetermined directions such that each resulting subpolygon satisfies a given width constraint. A polygon satisfies the unit-width…
We study two decomposition problems in combinatorial geometry. The first part deals with the decomposition of multiple coverings of the plane. We say that a planar set is cover-decomposable if there is a constant m such that any m-fold…
We study the minimum membership geometric set cover, i.e., MMGSC problem [SoCG, 2023] in the continuous setting. In this problem, the input consists of a set $P$ of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^{2}$, and a geometric object $t$, the goal is to…
We revisit a natural variant of geometric set cover, called minimum-membership geometric set cover (MMGSC). In this problem, the input consists of a set $S$ of points and a set $\mathcal{R}$ of geometric objects, and the goal is to find a…
Given a set $P$ of points and a set $U$ of axis-parallel unit squares in the Euclidean plane, a minimum ply cover of $P$ with $U$ is a subset of $U$ that covers $P$ and minimizes the number of squares that share a common intersection,…
Representing a polygon using a set of simple shapes has numerous applications in different use-case scenarios. We consider the problem of covering the interior of a rectilinear polygon with holes by a set of area-weighted, axis-aligned…
Given a set of $n$ points in the plane, the Unit Disk Cover (UDC) problem asks to compute the minimum number of unit disks required to cover the points, along with a placement of the disks. The problem is NP-hard and several approximation…