12 Search Results for "Shermer, Thomas"

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.33
Polychromatic 2-Colorings with Bounded Discrepancy for Triangulations

Authors: Alma Arevalo Loyola, Ahmad Biniaz, Prosenjit Bose, and Thomas Shermer

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 370, 20th Scandinavian Symposium on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2026)

Abstract
A polychromatic 2-coloring of a triangulation is a 2-coloring of the vertices such that no face is monochromatic. The discrepancy of a coloring is the maximum difference between the sizes of the color classes. Asayama and Matsumoto (Graphs and Combinatorics, 2022) proved that every triangulation admits a polychromatic 2-coloring with discrepancy at most (5n-16)/9, and that there exists a class of triangulations for which every polychromatic 2-coloring has discrepancy at least n/3 - 2, where n is the number of vertices. We improve the upper bound, showing that every triangulation admits a polychromatic 2-coloring with discrepancy at most (3n-16)/7 and such a 2-coloring can be computed in quadratic time. We also show a discrepancy of at most n-4M/3 for triangulations with a matching of size M. This implies, for example, that Delaunay triangulations admit a discrepancy of at most n/3. We provide a linear-time algorithm to compute a 2-coloring whose discrepancy is at most (5n-24)/7.
Cite as

Alma Arevalo Loyola, Ahmad Biniaz, Prosenjit Bose, and Thomas Shermer. Polychromatic 2-Colorings with Bounded Discrepancy for Triangulations. In 20th Scandinavian Symposium on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 370, pp. 33:1-33:13, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{loyola_et_al:LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.33,
  author =	{Loyola, Alma Arevalo and Biniaz, Ahmad and Bose, Prosenjit and Shermer, Thomas},
  title =	{{Polychromatic 2-Colorings with Bounded Discrepancy for Triangulations}},
  booktitle =	{20th Scandinavian Symposium on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2026)},
  pages =	{33:1--33:13},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-421-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{370},
  editor =	{Fraigniaud, Pierre},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.33},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-260691},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.33},
  annote =	{Keywords: polychromatic coloring, triangulation, balanced coloring, matching}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.1
Covering and Partitioning Complex Objects with Small Pieces

Authors: Anders Aamand, Mikkel Abrahamsen, Reilly Browne, Mayank Goswami, Prahlad Narasimhan Kasthurirangan, Linda Kleist, Joseph S. B. Mitchell, Valentin Polishchuk, and Jack Stade

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 367, 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)

Abstract
We study the problems of covering or partitioning a polygon P (possibly with holes) using a minimum number of small pieces, where a small piece is a connected sub-polygon contained in an axis-aligned unit square. For covering, we seek to write P as a union of small pieces, and in partitioning, we furthermore require the pieces to be pairwise interior-disjoint. We show that these problems are in fact equivalent: Optimum covers and partitions have the same number of pieces. For covering, a natural local search algorithm repeatedly attempts to replace k pieces from a candidate cover with k-1 pieces. In two dimensions and for sufficiently large k, we show that when no such swap is possible, the cover is a 1+ O(1/√k) approximation, hence obtaining the first PTAS for the problem. Prior to our work, the only known algorithm was a 13-approximation that only works for polygons without holes [Abrahamsen and Rasmussen, SODA 2025]. In contrast, in the three dimensional version of the problem, for a polyhedron P of complexity n, we show that it is NP-hard to approximate an optimal cover or partition to within a factor that is logarithmic in n, even if P is simple, i.e., has genus 0 and no holes.
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Anders Aamand, Mikkel Abrahamsen, Reilly Browne, Mayank Goswami, Prahlad Narasimhan Kasthurirangan, Linda Kleist, Joseph S. B. Mitchell, Valentin Polishchuk, and Jack Stade. Covering and Partitioning Complex Objects with Small Pieces. In 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 367, pp. 1:1-1:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{aamand_et_al:LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.1,
  author =	{Aamand, Anders and Abrahamsen, Mikkel and Browne, Reilly and Goswami, Mayank and Kasthurirangan, Prahlad Narasimhan and Kleist, Linda and Mitchell, Joseph S. B. and Polishchuk, Valentin and Stade, Jack},
  title =	{{Covering and Partitioning Complex Objects with Small Pieces}},
  booktitle =	{42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)},
  pages =	{1:1--1:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-418-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{367},
  editor =	{Ahn, Hee-Kap and Hoffmann, Michael and Nayyeri, Amir},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.1},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-258077},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.1},
  annote =	{Keywords: Covering, partitioning, polygon, small piece, PTAS}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.23
Shortest Paths in Geodesic Unit-Disk Graphs

Authors: Bruce W. Brewer and Haitao Wang

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 367, 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)

Abstract
Let S be a set of n points in a polygon P with m vertices. The geodesic unit-disk graph G(S) induced by S has vertex set S and contains an edge between two vertices whenever their geodesic distance in P is at most one. In the weighted version, each edge is assigned weight equal to the geodesic distance between its endpoints; in the unweighted version, every edge has weight 1. Given a source point s ∈ S, we study the problem of computing shortest paths from s to all vertices of G(S). To the best of our knowledge, this problem has not been investigated previously. A naive approach constructs G(S) explicitly and then applies a standard shortest path algorithm for general graphs, but this requires quadratic time in the worst case, since G(S) may contain Ω(n²) edges. In this paper, we give the first subquadratic-time algorithms for this problem. For the weighted case, when P is a simple polygon, we obtain an O(m + n log³ n log² m)-time algorithm. For the unweighted case, we provide an O(m + n log n log² m)-time algorithm for simple polygons, and an O(√n (n+m)log(n+m))-time algorithm for polygons with holes.
Cite as

Bruce W. Brewer and Haitao Wang. Shortest Paths in Geodesic Unit-Disk Graphs. In 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 367, pp. 23:1-23:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{brewer_et_al:LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.23,
  author =	{Brewer, Bruce W. and Wang, Haitao},
  title =	{{Shortest Paths in Geodesic Unit-Disk Graphs}},
  booktitle =	{42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)},
  pages =	{23:1--23:15},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-418-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{367},
  editor =	{Ahn, Hee-Kap and Hoffmann, Michael and Nayyeri, Amir},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.23},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-258297},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.23},
  annote =	{Keywords: unit-disk graph, geodesic distance, shortest paths, geodesic Voronoi diagrams, range emptiness queries, dynamic data structures}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.36
Upward Book Embeddings of Partitioned Digraphs

Authors: Giordano Da Lozzo, Fabrizio Frati, and Ignaz Rutter

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 367, 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)

Abstract
In 1999, Heath, Pemmaraju, and Trenk [SIAM J. Comput. 28(4), 1999] extended the classic notion of book embeddings to digraphs, introducing the concept of upward book embeddings, in which the vertices must appear along the spine in a topological order and the edges are partitioned into pages, so that no two edges in the same page cross. For a partitioned digraph G = (V, ⋃^k_{i=1} E_i), that is, a digraph whose edge set is partitioned into k subsets, an upward book embedding is required to assign edges to pages as prescribed by the given partition. In a companion paper, Heath and Pemmaraju [SIAM J. Comput. 28(5), 1999] proved that the problem of testing the existence of an upward book embedding of a partitioned digraph is linear-time solvable for k = 1 and recently Akitaya, Demaine, Hesterberg, and Liu [GD, 2017] have shown the problem NP-complete for k ≥ 3. In this paper, we study upward book embeddings of partitioned digraphs and focus on the unsolved case k = 2. Our first main result is a novel characterization of the upward embeddings that support an upward book embedding in two pages. We exploit this characterization in several ways, and obtain a rich picture of the complexity landscape of the problem. First, we show that the problem remains NP-complete when k = 2, thus closing the complexity gap for the problem. Second, we show that, for an n-vertex partitioned digraph with a prescribed planar embedding, the existence of an upward book embedding that respects the given planar embedding can be tested in O(n log³ n) time. Finally, leveraging the SPQ(R)-tree decomposition of biconnected graphs into triconnected components, we present a cubic-time testing algorithm for biconnected directed partial 2-trees.
Cite as

Giordano Da Lozzo, Fabrizio Frati, and Ignaz Rutter. Upward Book Embeddings of Partitioned Digraphs. In 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 367, pp. 36:1-36:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{dalozzo_et_al:LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.36,
  author =	{Da Lozzo, Giordano and Frati, Fabrizio and Rutter, Ignaz},
  title =	{{Upward Book Embeddings of Partitioned Digraphs}},
  booktitle =	{42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)},
  pages =	{36:1--36:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-418-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{367},
  editor =	{Ahn, Hee-Kap and Hoffmann, Michael and Nayyeri, Amir},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.36},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-258424},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.36},
  annote =	{Keywords: upward book embeddings, partitioned digraphs, SPQ-trees, 2-trees}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.44
Tilt Automata: Gathering Particles with Uniform External Control

Authors: Sándor P. Fekete, Jonas Friemel, Peter Kramer, Jan-Marc Reinhardt, Christian Rieck, and Christian Scheffer

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 367, 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)

Abstract
Motivated by targeted drug delivery, we investigate the gathering of particles in the full tilt model of externally controlled motion planning: A set of particles is located at the tiles of a polyomino with all particles reacting uniformly to an external force by moving as far as possible in one of the four axis-parallel directions until they hit the boundary. The goal is to choose a sequence of directions that moves all particles to a common position. Our results include a polynomial-time algorithm for gathering in a completely filled polyomino as well as hardness reductions for approximating shortest gathering sequences and for determining whether the particles in a partially filled polyomino can be gathered. We pay special attention to the impact of restricted geometry, particularly polyominoes without holes. As a corollary, we make progress on an open question from [Balanza-Martinez et al., SODA 2020] by showing that deciding whether a given position can be occupied remains NP-hard in polyominoes without holes. Our results build on a connection we establish between tilt models and the theory of synchronizing automata.
Cite as

Sándor P. Fekete, Jonas Friemel, Peter Kramer, Jan-Marc Reinhardt, Christian Rieck, and Christian Scheffer. Tilt Automata: Gathering Particles with Uniform External Control. In 42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 367, pp. 44:1-44:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{fekete_et_al:LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.44,
  author =	{Fekete, S\'{a}ndor P. and Friemel, Jonas and Kramer, Peter and Reinhardt, Jan-Marc and Rieck, Christian and Scheffer, Christian},
  title =	{{Tilt Automata: Gathering Particles with Uniform External Control}},
  booktitle =	{42nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2026)},
  pages =	{44:1--44:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-418-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{367},
  editor =	{Ahn, Hee-Kap and Hoffmann, Michael and Nayyeri, Amir},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.44},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-258508},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2026.44},
  annote =	{Keywords: Uniform control, gathering, full tilt, polyominoes, synchronizing automata}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2026.30
Replacing Cops with Zombies

Authors: Fengyi Liu and Avery Miller

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 366, 13th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2026)

Abstract
In the Cops and Robbers game, two players take turns to move their pieces in a given graph, and the goal of the Cop player is to have any of their pieces capture the piece controlled by the Robber player. In the Zombies and Survivors variant, the Zombie player is trying to catch the piece controlled by the Survivor player, but the pursuers are more restricted: the zombie pieces must always move, and must do so toward the survivor along a shortest path. Essentially, the zombies move in a 'brainless' way, which severely limits the design of algorithmic strategies. In a practical setting where the pursuers are robots or drones, the zombie strategies can be carried out by simpler/cheaper devices. This motivates the question: when can cops be replaced by zombies? In contrast to previous work that highlights graph classes where cops are significantly more useful when trying to catch the evader, we examine some situations where the simpler restricted movements imposed on zombies can be sufficient.
Cite as

Fengyi Liu and Avery Miller. Replacing Cops with Zombies. In 13th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 366, pp. 30:1-30:12, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{liu_et_al:LIPIcs.FUN.2026.30,
  author =	{Liu, Fengyi and Miller, Avery},
  title =	{{Replacing Cops with Zombies}},
  booktitle =	{13th International Conference on Fun with Algorithms (FUN 2026)},
  pages =	{30:1--30:12},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-417-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{366},
  editor =	{Iacono, John},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2026.30},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-257492},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FUN.2026.30},
  annote =	{Keywords: Pursuit-Evasion Games, Grid Graphs, Cop Number, Zombie Number, Throttling Number}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.WADS.2025.10
On Geodesic Disks Enclosing Many Points

Authors: Prosenjit Bose, Guillermo Esteban, David Orden, Rodrigo I. Silveira, and Tyler Tuttle

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 349, 19th International Symposium on Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS 2025)

Abstract
Let Π(n) be the largest number such that for every set S of n points in a polygon P, there always exist two points x, y ∈ S, where every geodesic disk containing x and y contains Π(n) points of S. We establish upper and lower bounds for Π(n), and show that ⌈n/5⌉ +1 ≤ Π(n) ≤ ⌈n/4⌉ +1. We also show that there always exist two points x, y ∈ S such that every geodesic disk with x and y on its boundary contains at least 16/665(n-2) ≈ ⌈(n-2)/41.6⌉ points both inside and outside the disk. For the special case where the points of S are restricted to be the vertices of a geodesically convex polygon we give a tight bound of ⌈n/3⌉ + 1. We provide the same tight bound when we only consider geodesic disks having x and y as diametral endpoints. Finally, we give a lower bound of ⌈(n-2)/36⌉+2 for the two-colored version of the problem.
Cite as

Prosenjit Bose, Guillermo Esteban, David Orden, Rodrigo I. Silveira, and Tyler Tuttle. On Geodesic Disks Enclosing Many Points. In 19th International Symposium on Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 349, pp. 10:1-10:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{bose_et_al:LIPIcs.WADS.2025.10,
  author =	{Bose, Prosenjit and Esteban, Guillermo and Orden, David and Silveira, Rodrigo I. and Tuttle, Tyler},
  title =	{{On Geodesic Disks Enclosing Many Points}},
  booktitle =	{19th International Symposium on Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS 2025)},
  pages =	{10:1--10:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-398-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{349},
  editor =	{Morin, Pat and Oh, Eunjin},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.WADS.2025.10},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-242414},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.WADS.2025.10},
  annote =	{Keywords: Enclosing disks, Geodesic disks, Bichromatic}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.46
Guarding Offices with Maximum Dispersion

Authors: Sándor P. Fekete, Kai Kobbe, Dominik Krupke, Joseph S. B. Mitchell, Christian Rieck, and Christian Scheffer

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 345, 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)

Abstract
We investigate the Dispersive Art Gallery Problem with vertex guards and rectangular visibility (r-visibility) for a class of orthogonal polygons that reflect the properties of real-world floor plans: these office-like polygons consist of rectangular rooms and corridors. In the dispersive variant of the Art Gallery Problem, the objective is not to minimize the number of guards but to maximize the minimum geodesic L₁-distance between any two guards, called the dispersion distance. Our main contributions are as follows. We prove that determining whether a vertex guard set can achieve a dispersion distance of 4 in office-like polygons is NP-complete, where vertices of the polygon are restricted to integer coordinates. Additionally, we present a simple worst-case optimal algorithm that guarantees a dispersion distance of 3 in polynomial time. Our complexity result extends to polyominoes, resolving an open question posed by Rieck and Scheffer [Christian Rieck and Christian Scheffer, 2024]. When vertex coordinates are allowed to be rational, we establish analogous results, proving that achieving a dispersion distance of 2+ε is NP-hard for any ε > 0, while the classic Art Gallery Problem remains solvable in polynomial time for this class of polygons. Furthermore, we give a straightforward polynomial-time algorithm that computes worst-case optimal solutions with a dispersion distance 2. On the other hand, for the more restricted class of hole-free independent office-like polygons, we propose a dynamic programming approach that computes optimal solutions. Moreover, we demonstrate that the problem is practically tractable for arbitrary orthogonal polygons. To this end, we compare solvers based on SAT, CP, and MIP formulations. Notably, SAT solvers efficiently compute optimal solutions for randomly generated instances with up to 1600 vertices in under 15s.
Cite as

Sándor P. Fekete, Kai Kobbe, Dominik Krupke, Joseph S. B. Mitchell, Christian Rieck, and Christian Scheffer. Guarding Offices with Maximum Dispersion. In 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 345, pp. 46:1-46:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{fekete_et_al:LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.46,
  author =	{Fekete, S\'{a}ndor P. and Kobbe, Kai and Krupke, Dominik and Mitchell, Joseph S. B. and Rieck, Christian and Scheffer, Christian},
  title =	{{Guarding Offices with Maximum Dispersion}},
  booktitle =	{50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)},
  pages =	{46:1--46:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-388-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{345},
  editor =	{Gawrychowski, Pawe{\l} and Mazowiecki, Filip and Skrzypczak, Micha{\l}},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.46},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-241530},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.46},
  annote =	{Keywords: Dispersive Art Gallery Problem, vertex guards, office-like polygons, orthogonal polygons, polyominoes, NP-completeness, worst-case optimality, dynamic programming, SAT solver}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2025.20
Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Contiguous Art Gallery and Related Problems

Authors: Ahmad Biniaz, Anil Maheshwari, Magnus Christian Ring Merrild, Joseph S. B. Mitchell, Saeed Odak, Valentin Polishchuk, Eliot W. Robson, Casper Moldrup Rysgaard, Jens Kristian Refsgaard Schou, Thomas Shermer, Jack Spalding-Jamieson, Rolf Svenning, and Da Wei Zheng

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 332, 41st International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2025)

Abstract
We introduce the contiguous art gallery problem which is to guard the boundary of a simple polygon with a minimum number of guards such that each guard covers exactly one contiguous portion of the boundary. Art gallery problems are often NP-hard. In particular, it is NP-hard to minimize the number of guards to see the boundary of a simple polygon, without the contiguity constraint. This paper is a merge of three concurrent works [Ahmad Biniaz et al., 2024; Magnus Christian Ring Merrild et al., 2024; Eliot W. Robson et al., 2024] each showing that (surprisingly) the contiguous art gallery problem is solvable in polynomial time. The common idea of all three approaches is developing a greedy function that maps a point on the boundary to the furthest point on the boundary so that the contiguous interval along the boundary between them could be guarded by one guard. Repeatedly applying this function immediately leads to an OPT+1 approximation. By studying this greedy algorithm, we present three different approaches that achieve an optimal solution. The first and second approach apply this greedy algorithm from different points on the boundary that could be found in advance or on the fly while traversing along the boundary (respectively). The third approach represents this function as a piecewise linear rational function, which can be reduced to an abstract arc cover problem involving infinite families of arcs. We identify other problems that can be represented by similar functions, and solve them via the third approach. From the combinatorial point of view, we show that any n-vertex polygon can be guarded by at most ⌊(n-2)/2⌋ guards. This bound is tight because there are polygons that require this many guards.
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Ahmad Biniaz, Anil Maheshwari, Magnus Christian Ring Merrild, Joseph S. B. Mitchell, Saeed Odak, Valentin Polishchuk, Eliot W. Robson, Casper Moldrup Rysgaard, Jens Kristian Refsgaard Schou, Thomas Shermer, Jack Spalding-Jamieson, Rolf Svenning, and Da Wei Zheng. Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Contiguous Art Gallery and Related Problems. In 41st International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 332, pp. 20:1-20:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{biniaz_et_al:LIPIcs.SoCG.2025.20,
  author =	{Biniaz, Ahmad and Maheshwari, Anil and Merrild, Magnus Christian Ring and Mitchell, Joseph S. B. and Odak, Saeed and Polishchuk, Valentin and Robson, Eliot W. and Rysgaard, Casper Moldrup and Schou, Jens Kristian Refsgaard and Shermer, Thomas and Spalding-Jamieson, Jack and Svenning, Rolf and Zheng, Da Wei},
  title =	{{Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Contiguous Art Gallery and Related Problems}},
  booktitle =	{41st International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2025)},
  pages =	{20:1--20:21},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-370-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{332},
  editor =	{Aichholzer, Oswin and Wang, Haitao},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2025.20},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-231720},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2025.20},
  annote =	{Keywords: Art Gallery Problem, Computational Geometry, Combinatorics, Discrete Algorithms}
}
Artifact
Software
DOI: 10.4230/artifacts.23018
RolfSvenning/ContiguousArtGallery

Authors: Rolf Svenning

Abstract
Cite as

Rolf Svenning. RolfSvenning/ContiguousArtGallery (Software, Source Code). Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@misc{github_impl,
   title = {{RolfSvenning/ContiguousArtGallery}}, 
   author = {Svenning, Rolf},
   note = {Software, Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF), grant 9131- 00113B, swhId: \href{https://archive.softwareheritage.org/swh:1:dir:7cfaba2c09d953feb90a49f0e26370ea3f7719a7;origin=https://github.com/RolfSvenning/ContiguousArtGallery;visit=swh:1:snp:24512c962bdc05c9bff737a006e263acf6b13e78;anchor=swh:1:rev:af66971aa2b832e98dcd6b1fcf8eac88d5901b93}{\texttt{swh:1:dir:7cfaba2c09d953feb90a49f0e26370ea3f7719a7}} (visited on 2025-06-20)},
   url = {https://github.com/RolfSvenning/ContiguousArtGallery},
   doi = {10.4230/artifacts.23018},
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2022.56
Pursuit-Evasion in Graphs: Zombies, Lazy Zombies and a Survivor

Authors: Prosenjit Bose, Jean-Lou De Carufel, and Thomas Shermer

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 248, 33rd International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2022)

Abstract
We study zombies and survivor, a variant of the game of cops and robber on graphs. In this variant, the single survivor plays the role of the robber and attempts to escape from the zombies that play the role of the cops. The zombies are restricted, on their turn, to always follow an edge of a shortest path towards the survivor. Let z(G) be the smallest number of zombies required to catch the survivor on a graph G with n vertices. We show that there exist outerplanar graphs and visibility graphs of simple polygons such that z(G) = Θ(n). We also show that there exist maximum-degree-3 outerplanar graphs such that z(G) = Ω(n/log(n)). Let z_L(G) be the smallest number of lazy zombies (zombies that can stay still on their turn) required to catch the survivor on a graph G. We show that lazy zombies are more powerful than normal zombies but less powerful than cops. We prove that z_L(G) ≤ 2 for connected outerplanar graphs and this bound is tight in the worst case. We show that z_L(G) ≤ k for connected graphs with treedepth k. This result implies that z_L(G) is at most (k+1)log n for connected graphs with treewidth k, O(√n) for connected planar graphs, O(√{gn}) for connected graphs with genus g and O(h√{hn}) for connected graphs with any excluded h-vertex minor. Our results on lazy zombies still hold when an adversary chooses the initial positions of the zombies.
Cite as

Prosenjit Bose, Jean-Lou De Carufel, and Thomas Shermer. Pursuit-Evasion in Graphs: Zombies, Lazy Zombies and a Survivor. In 33rd International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 248, pp. 56:1-56:13, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)

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@InProceedings{bose_et_al:LIPIcs.ISAAC.2022.56,
  author =	{Bose, Prosenjit and De Carufel, Jean-Lou and Shermer, Thomas},
  title =	{{Pursuit-Evasion in Graphs: Zombies, Lazy Zombies and a Survivor}},
  booktitle =	{33rd International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2022)},
  pages =	{56:1--56:13},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-258-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{248},
  editor =	{Bae, Sang Won and Park, Heejin},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2022.56},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-173418},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2022.56},
  annote =	{Keywords: Pursuit-evasion games, Outerplanar, Graphs, Treedepth, Treewidth}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2018.13
Gathering by Repulsion

Authors: Prosenjit Bose and Thomas C. Shermer

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 101, 16th Scandinavian Symposium and Workshops on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2018)

Abstract
We consider a repulsion actuator located in an n-sided convex environment full of point particles. When the actuator is activated, all the particles move away from the actuator. We study the problem of gathering all the particles to a point. We give an O(n^2) time algorithm to compute all the actuator locations that gather the particles to one point with one activation, and an O(n) time algorithm to find a single such actuator location if one exists. We then provide an O(n) time algorithm to place the optimal number of actuators whose sequential activation results in the gathering of the particles when such a placement exists.
Cite as

Prosenjit Bose and Thomas C. Shermer. Gathering by Repulsion. In 16th Scandinavian Symposium and Workshops on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2018). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 101, pp. 13:1-13:12, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2018)

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@InProceedings{bose_et_al:LIPIcs.SWAT.2018.13,
  author =	{Bose, Prosenjit and Shermer, Thomas C.},
  title =	{{Gathering by Repulsion}},
  booktitle =	{16th Scandinavian Symposium and Workshops on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2018)},
  pages =	{13:1--13:12},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-068-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2018},
  volume =	{101},
  editor =	{Eppstein, David},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2018.13},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-88397},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2018.13},
  annote =	{Keywords: polygon, kernel, beacon attraction}
}
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