Bellman Search in Arbitrary Finite Dimension: A Self-Similar Cell Theorem and Effective Computability of Planar Shoreline Search

Abstract

A shoreline-search path starts at the origin and must meet an unknown affine line, without knowing either its normal or its distance. We first establish a self-similar reduction theorem for homogeneous search problems whose historical information is a record profile updated by pointwise maximum. Two quasi-returns of the normalized state delimit a block that renews the required profile by itself; a short connector closes this block into a cell. Every finite-ratio path can therefore be approximated, with arbitrarily small loss, by repetitions of a single cell at all scales. The main chain is then made effective. A finite coding of the state space computably bounds the scale factor and normalized length of a nearly optimal cell. For planar Shoreline search, the support function of the convex hull gives an exact cell functional. A one-sided polygonalization then reduces the problem to a computable number of vertices, after which quantifier elimination decides whether a polygonal cell exists below a rational threshold. It follows that the optimal deterministic planar Shoreline value $C_2^*$ is a computable real: for every rational $\epsilon>0$, an algorithm terminates with a rational interval of width at most $\epsilon$ containing $C_2^*$. Additional results---sliding memory, Bellman transitions, deadlines, geometric filters, and relative equilibria---are presented separately as a toolbox for certified computation and for the study of spiral rigidity; they are not used in the computability proof.