arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Christian Knauer.
Let $\mathcal{A}$ be the subdivision of $\mathbb{R}^d$ induced by $m$ convex polyhedra having $n$ facets in total. We prove that $\mathcal{A}$ has combinatorial complexity $O(m^{\lceil d/2 \rceil} n^{\lfloor d/2 \rfloor})$ and that this bound is tight. The bound is mentioned several times in the literature, but no proof for arbitrary dimension has been published before.
Let $P$ be a set of at most $n$ points and let $R$ be a set of at most $n$ geometric ranges, such as for example disks or rectangles, where each $p \in P$ has an associated supply $s_{p} > 0$, and each $r \in R$ has an associated demand $d_{r} > 0$. A (many-to-many) matching is a set $\mathcal{A}$ of ordered triples $(p,r,a_{pr}) \in P \times R \times \mathbb{R}_{>0}$ such that $p \in r$ and the $a_{pr}$'s satisfy the constraints given by the supplies and demands. We show how to compute a maximum matching, that is, a matching maximizing $\sum_{(p,r,a_{pr}) \in \mathcal{A}} a_{pr}$. Using our techniques, we can also solve minimum bottleneck problems, such as computing a perfect matching between a set of $n$ red points $P$ and a set of $n$ blue points $Q$ that minimizes the length of the longest edge. For the $L_\infty$-metric, we can do this in time $O(n^{1+\varepsilon})$ in any fixed dimension, for the $L_2$-metric in the plane in time $O(n^{4/3 + \varepsilon})$, for any $\varepsilon > 0$.
We consider the problem of packing a family of disks "on a shelf", that is, such that each disk touches the $x$-axis from above and such that no two disks overlap. We prove that the problem of minimizing the distance between the leftmost point and the rightmost point of any disk is NP-hard. On the positive side, we show how to approximate this problem within a factor of 4/3 in $O(n \log n)$ time, and provide an $O(n \log n)$-time exact algorithm for a special case, in particular when the ratio between the largest and smallest radius is at most four.
Let $P$ be a set of $n$ points in the plane. We show how to find, for a given integer $k>0$, the smallest-area axis-parallel rectangle that covers $k$ points of $P$ in $O(nk^2 \log n+ n\log^2 n)$ time. We also consider the problem of, given a value $\alpha>0$, covering as many points of $P$ as possible with an axis-parallel rectangle of area at most $\alpha$. For this problem we give a probabilistic $(1-\varepsilon)$-approximation that works in near-linear time: In $O((n/\varepsilon^4)\log^3 n \log (1/\varepsilon))$ time we find an axis-parallel rectangle of area at most $\alpha$ that, with high probability, covers at least $(1-\varepsilon)\mathrm{\kappa^*}$ points, where $\mathrm{\kappa^*}$ is the maximum possible number of points that could be covered.
We consider the problem of augmenting an n-vertex graph embedded in a metric space, by inserting one additional edge in order to minimize the diameter of the resulting graph. We present exact algorithms for the cases when (i) the input graph is a path, running in O(n \log^3 n) time, and (ii) the input graph is a tree, running in O(n^2 \log n) time. We also present an algorithm that computes a (1+\eps)-approximation in O(n + 1/\eps^3) time, for paths in R^d, where d is a constant.
$\renewcommand{\Re}{{\rm I\!\hspace{-0.025em} R}} \newcommand{\eps}{\varepsilon} \newcommand{\SetX}{\mathsf{X}} \newcommand{\VorX}[1]{\mathcal{V} \pth{#1}} \newcommand{\Polygon}{\mathsf{P}} \newcommand{\Space}{\overline{\mathsf{m}}} \newcommand{\pth}[2][\!]{#1\left({#2}\right)}$ We revisit the problem of computing Fréchet distance between polygonal curves under $L_1$, $L_2$, and $L_\infty$ norms, focusing on discrete Fréchet distance, where only distance between vertices is considered. We develop efficient algorithms for two natural classes of curves. In particular, given two polygonal curves of $n$ vertices each, a $\eps$-approximation of their discrete Fréchet distance can be computed in roughly $O(nκ^3\log n/\eps^3)$ time in three dimensions, if one of the curves is \emph{$κ$-bounded}. Previously, only a $κ$-approximation algorithm was known. If both curves are the so-called \emph{\backbone~curves}, which are widely used to model protein backbones in molecular biology, we can $\eps$-approximate their Fréchet distance in near linear time in two dimensions, and in roughly $O(n^{4/3}\log nm)$ time in three dimensions. In the second part, we propose a pseudo--output-sensitive algorithm for computing Fréchet distance exactly. The complexity of the algorithm is a function of a quantity we call the \emph{\bwnumber{}}, which is quadratic in the worst case, but tends to be much smaller in practice.
We consider the following geometric optimization problem: find a maximum-area rectangle and a maximum-perimeter rectangle contained in a given convex polygon with $n$ vertices. We give exact algorithms that solve these problems in time $O(n^3)$. We also give $(1-\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithms that take time $O(\varepsilon^{-3/2}+ \varepsilon^{-1/2} \log n)$.
The problem of maximizing the $p$-th power of a $p$-norm over a halfspace-presented polytope in $\R^d$ is a convex maximization problem which plays a fundamental role in computational convexity. It has been shown in 1986 that this problem is $\NP$-hard for all values $p \in \mathbb{N}$, if the dimension $d$ of the ambient space is part of the input. In this paper, we use the theory of parametrized complexity to analyze how heavily the hardness of norm maximization relies on the parameter $d$. More precisely, we show that for $p=1$ the problem is fixed parameter tractable but that for all $p \in \mathbb{N} \setminus \{1\}$ norm maximization is W[1]-hard. Concerning approximation algorithms for norm maximization, we show that for fixed accuracy, there is a straightforward approximation algorithm for norm maximization in FPT running time, but there is no FPT approximation algorithm, the running time of which depends polynomially on the accuracy. As with the $\NP$-hardness of norm maximization, the W[1]-hardness immediately carries over to various radius computation tasks in Computational Convexity.
We consider the following problem: Given a point set in space find a largest subset that is in convex position and whose convex hull is empty. We show that the (decision version of the) problem is W[1]-hard.
We give exact and approximation algorithms for two-center problems when the input is a set $\mathcal{D}$ of disks in the plane. We first study the problem of finding two smallest congruent disks such that each disk in $\mathcal{D}$ intersects one of these two disks. Then we study the problem of covering the set $\mathcal{D}$ by two smallest congruent disks.
We consider the computational versions of the Erd\H os-Szekeres theorem and related problems in 3 dimensions. We show that, in constrast to the planar case, no polynomial time algorithm exists for determining the largest (empty) convex subset (unless P=NP) among a set of points, by proving that the corresponding decision problem is NP-hard. This answers a question by Dobkin, Edelsbrunner and Overmars from 1990. As a corollary, we derive a similar result for the closely related problem of testing weak epsilon-nets in R^3. Answering a question by Chazelle et al. from 1995, our reduction shows that the problem is co-NP-hard. This is work in progress - we are still trying to find a smart approximation algorithm for the problems.
We study the complexity of the following cell connection and separation problems in segment arrangements. Given a set of straight-line segments in the plane and two points $a$ and $b$ in different cells of the induced arrangement: (i) compute the minimum number of segments one needs to remove so that there is a path connecting $a$ to $b$ that does not intersect any of the remaining segments; (ii) compute the minimum number of segments one needs to remove so that the arrangement induced by the remaining segments has a single cell; (iii) compute the minimum number of segments one needs to retain so that any path connecting $a$ to $b$ intersects some of the retained segments. We show that problems (i) and (ii) are NP-hard and discuss some special, tractable cases. Most notably, we provide a linear-time algorithm for a variant of problem (i) where the path connecting $a$ to $b$ must stay inside a given polygon $P$ with a constant number of holes, the segments are contained in $P$, and the endpoints of the segments are on the boundary of $P$. For problem (iii) we provide a cubic-time algorithm.
Discrepancy measures how uniformly distributed a point set is with respect to a given set of ranges. There are two notions of discrepancy, namely continuous discrepancy and combinatorial discrepancy. Depending on the ranges, several possible variants arise, for example star discrepancy, box discrepancy, and discrepancy of half-spaces. In this paper, we investigate the hardness of these problems with respect to the dimension d of the underlying space. All these problems are solvable in time {n^O(d)}, but such a time dependency quickly becomes intractable for high-dimensional data. Thus it is interesting to ask whether the dependency on d can be moderated. We answer this question negatively by proving that the canonical decision problems are W[1]-hard with respect to the dimension. This is done via a parameterized reduction from the Clique problem. As the parameter stays linear in the input parameter, the results moreover imply that these problems require {n^Ω(d)} time, unless 3-Sat can be solved in {2^o(n)} time. Further, we derive that testing whether a given set is an ε-net with respect to half-spaces takes {n^Ω(d)} time under the same assumption. As intermediate results, we discover the W[1]-hardness of other well known problems, such as determining the largest empty star inside the unit cube. For this, we show that it is even hard to approximate within a factor of {2^n}.
In this paper we present closed-form solutions for efficiently updating the principal components of a set of $n$ points, when $m$ points are added or deleted from the point set. For both operations performed on a discrete point set in $\mathbb{R}^d$, we can compute the new principal components in $O(m)$ time for fixed $d$. This is a significant improvement over the commonly used approach of recomputing the principal components from scratch, which takes $O(n+m)$ time. An important application of the above result is the dynamical computation of bounding boxes based on principal component analysis. PCA bounding boxes are very often used in many fields, among others in computer graphics for collision detection and fast rendering. We have implemented and evaluated few algorithms for computing dynamically PCA bounding boxes in $\mathbb{R}^3$. In addition, we present closed-form solutions for computing dynamically principal components of continuous point sets in $\mathbb{R}^2$ and $\mathbb{R}^3$. In both cases, discrete and continuous, to compute the new principal components, no additional data structures or storage are needed.
We consider the directed Hausdorff distance between point sets in the plane, where one or both point sets consist of imprecise points. An imprecise point is modelled by a disc given by its centre and a radius. The actual position of an imprecise point may be anywhere within its disc. Due to the direction of the Hausdorff Distance and whether its tight upper or lower bound is computed there are several cases to consider. For every case we either show that the computation is NP-hard or we present an algorithm with a polynomial running time. Further we give several approximation algorithms for the hard cases and show that one of them cannot be approximated better than with factor 3, unless P=NP.
We study the following general stabbing problem from a parameterized complexity point of view: Given a set $\mathcal S$ of $n$ translates of an object in $\Rd$, find a set of $k$ lines with the property that every object in $\mathcal S$ is ''stabbed'' (intersected) by at least one line. We show that when $S$ consists of axis-parallel unit squares in $\Rtwo$ the (decision) problem of stabbing $S$ with axis-parallel lines is W[1]-hard with respect to $k$ (and thus, not fixed-parameter tractable unless FPT=W[1]) while it becomes fixed-parameter tractable when the squares are disjoint. We also show that the problem of stabbing a set of disjoint unit squares in $\Rtwo$ with lines of arbitrary directions is W[1]--hard with respect to $k$. Several generalizations to other types of objects and lines with arbitrary directions are also presented. Finally, we show that deciding whether a set of unit balls in $\Rd$ can be stabbed by one line is W[1]--hard with respect to the dimension $d$.
We study the parameterized complexity of the following fundamental geometric problems with respect to the dimension $d$: i) Given $n$ points in $\Rd$, compute their minimum enclosing cylinder. ii) Given two $n$-point sets in $\Rd$, decide whether they can be separated by two hyperplanes. iii) Given a system of $n$ linear inequalities with $d$ variables, find a maximum-size feasible subsystem. We show that (the decision versions of) all these problems are W[1]-hard when parameterized by the dimension $d$. %and hence not solvable in ${O}(f(d)n^c)$ time, for any computable function $f$ and constant $c$ %(unless FPT=W[1]). Our reductions also give a $n^{Ω(d)}$-time lower bound (under the Exponential Time Hypothesis).
In this paper we consider several instances of the k-center on a line problem where the goal is, given a set of points S in the plane and a parameter k >= 1, to find k disks with centers on a line l such that their union covers S and the maximum radius of the disks is minimized. This problem is a constraint version of the well-known k-center problem in which the centers are constrained to lie in a particular region such as a segment, a line, and a polygon. We first consider the simplest version of the problem where the line l is given in advance; we can solve this problem in O(n log^2 n) time. We then investigate the cases where only the orientation of the line l is fixed and where the line l can be arbitrary. We can solve these problems in O(n^2 log^2 n) time and in O(n^4 log^2 n) expected time, respectively. For the last two problems, we present (1 + e)-approximation algorithms, which run in O((1/e) n log^2 n) time and O((1/e^2) n log^2 n) time, respectively.