Related papers: Billiard Lawn Mowers

We give lower bound on the number of periodic billiard trajectories inside a generic smooth strictly convex closed surface in 3-space: for odd n, there are at least 2(n-1) such trajectories. We apply a topological approach based on the…

We propose geometric tools that are suitable for studying the behavior of a billiard trajectory in a homogeneous force field. Two examples are considered: a vertical plane with an open top and with a parabolic or right angle boundary at the…

In this paper, we present several results of both theoretical as well as practical interests. First, we propose the quota lawn mowing problem, an extension of the classic lawn mowing problem in computational geometry, as follows: given a…

We investigate the rotation sets of billiards on the $m$-dimensional torus with one small convex obstacle and in the square with one small convex obstacle. In the first case the displacement function, whose averages we consider, measures…

This paper discusses the problem of covering and hitting a set of line segments $\cal L$ in ${\mathbb R}^2$ by a pair of axis-parallel squares such that the side length of the larger of the two squares is minimized. We also discuss the…

We study three covering problems in the plane. Our original motivation for these problems come from trajectory analysis. The first is to decide whether a given set of line segments can be covered by up to four unit-sized, axis-parallel…

The problem of constrained coverage path planning involves a robot trying to cover maximum area of an environment under some constraints that appear as obstacles in the map. Out of the several coverage path planning methods, we consider…

We consider billiard trajectories in a smooth convex body in $\mathbb R^d$ and estimate the number of distinct periodic trajectories that make exactly $p$ reflections per period at the boundary of the body. In the case of prime $p$ we…

The on-line shortest path problem is considered under various models of partial monitoring. Given a weighted directed acyclic graph whose edge weights can change in an arbitrary (adversarial) way, a decision maker has to choose in each…

The goal of this paper is twofold; first, show the equivalence between certain problems in geometry, such as view-obstruction and billiard ball motions, with the estimation of covering radii of lattice zonotopes. Second, we will estimate…

We provide several applications of the linearization problem of a binary quadratic problem. We propose a new lower bounding strategy, called the linearization-based scheme, that is based on a simple certificate for a quadratic function to…

Let $T\subset \R^{m+1}$ be a strictly convex domain bounded by a smooth hypersurface $X=\partial T$. In this paper we find lower bounds on the number of billiard trajectories in $T$ which have a prescribed intial point $A\in X$, a…

We give topological lower bounds on the number of periodic and closed trajectories in strictly convex smooth billiards. We use variational reduction admitting a finite group of symmetries and apply topological approach based on equivariant…

We describe a class of combinatorial design problems which typically occur in professional sailing league competitions. We discuss connections to resolvable block designs and equitable coverings and to scheduling problems in operations…

We study periodic linear trajectories in the double pentagon and periodic billiard trajectories in the regular pentagon.

We prove some partial results on the periodicity of billiard systems on graphs. The results specialize to the case of $n$ billiards with equal mass on the unit interval or circle traveling at the same speed.

The billiard problem concerns a point particle moving freely in a region of the horizontal plane bounded by a closed curve $\Gamma$, and reflected at each impact with $\Gamma$. The region is called a `billiard', and the reflections are…

A periodic trajectory on a polygonal billiard table is stable if it persists under any sufficiently small perturbation of the table. It is a standard result that a periodic trajectory on an $n$-gon gives rise in a natural way to a closed…

We introduce a new method for estimating the growth of various quantities arising in dynamical systems. We apply our method to polygonal billiards on surfaces of constant curvature. For instance, we obtain power bounds of degree two plus…

We study periodic infinite billiards in the plane. We show that for rational models, some particular obstacles can be added periodically, so that the billiard flow in the resulting table is recurrent in almost every direction.