Contiguous Boundary Guarding

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Biniaz, Ahmad, Maheshwari, Anil, Mitchell, Joseph S. B., Odak, Saeed, Polishchuk, Valentin, Shermer, Thomas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Biniaz, Ahmad
Maheshwari, Anil
Mitchell, Joseph S. B.
Odak, Saeed
Polishchuk, Valentin
Shermer, Thomas
author_facet Biniaz, Ahmad
Maheshwari, Anil
Mitchell, Joseph S. B.
Odak, Saeed
Polishchuk, Valentin
Shermer, Thomas
contents 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 guard set of size at most OPT + 1, where OPT is the number of guards in an optimal solution. Then, we present a polynomial-time exact algorithm. While the algorithm is not complicated, its correctness proof is rather involved. This result is interesting in the sense that guarding problems are typically NP-hard and, in particular, it is NP-hard to minimize the number of guards to see the boundary of a simple polygon, without the contiguous boundary guarding constraint. From the combinatorial point of view, we show that any $n$-vertex polygon can be guarded by at most $\lfloor \frac{n-2}{2}\rfloor$ guards. This bound is tight because there are polygons that require this many guards.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_15053
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Contiguous Boundary Guarding
Biniaz, Ahmad
Maheshwari, Anil
Mitchell, Joseph S. B.
Odak, Saeed
Polishchuk, Valentin
Shermer, Thomas
Computational Geometry
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 guard set of size at most OPT + 1, where OPT is the number of guards in an optimal solution. Then, we present a polynomial-time exact algorithm. While the algorithm is not complicated, its correctness proof is rather involved. This result is interesting in the sense that guarding problems are typically NP-hard and, in particular, it is NP-hard to minimize the number of guards to see the boundary of a simple polygon, without the contiguous boundary guarding constraint. From the combinatorial point of view, we show that any $n$-vertex polygon can be guarded by at most $\lfloor \frac{n-2}{2}\rfloor$ guards. This bound is tight because there are polygons that require this many guards.
title Contiguous Boundary Guarding
topic Computational Geometry
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.15053