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The Point-Boundary Art Gallery Problem Is ∃ℝ-Hard

Author Jack Stade

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LIPIcs.SoCG.2025.74.pdf
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ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Computational geometry
Keywords
  • Art Gallery Problem
  • Complexity
  • ETR
  • Polygon

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Abstract

We resolve the complexity of the point-boundary variant of the art gallery problem, showing that it is ∃ℝ-complete, meaning that it is equivalent under polynomial time reductions to deciding whether a system of polynomial equations has a real solution. 
The art gallery problem asks whether there is a configuration of guards that together can see every point inside of an art gallery modeled by a simple polygon. The original version of this problem (which we call the point-point variant) was shown to be ∃ℝ-hard [Abrahamsen, Adamaszek, and Miltzow, JACM 2021], but the complexity of the variant where guards only need to guard the walls of the art gallery was left as an open problem. We show that this variant is also ∃ℝ-hard.
Our techniques can also be used to greatly simplify the proof of ∃ℝ-hardness of the point-point art gallery problem. The gadgets in previous work could only be constructed by using a computer to find complicated rational coordinates with specific algebraic properties. All of our gadgets can be constructed by hand and can be verified with simple geometric arguments.

Cite As Get BibTex

Jack Stade. The Point-Boundary Art Gallery Problem Is ∃ℝ-Hard. In 41st International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 332, pp. 74:1-74:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2025.74

Author Details

Jack Stade
  • University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Funding

Supported by Independent Research Fund Denmark, grant 1054-00032B, and by the Carlsberg Foundation, grant CF24-1929.

References

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