54 research outputs found
Finding Closed Quasigeodesics on Convex Polyhedra
No full textA closed quasigeodesic is a closed loop on the surface of a polyhedron with at most 180° of surface on both sides at all points; such loops can be locally unfolded straight. In 1949, Pogorelov proved that every convex polyhedron has at least three (non-self-intersecting) closed quasigeodesics, but the proof relies on a nonconstructive topological argument. We present the first finite algorithm to find a closed quasigeodesic on a given convex polyhedron, which is the first positive progress on a 1990 open problem by O'Rourke and Wyman. The algorithm’s running time is pseudopolynomial, namely O(n²/ε² L/ b) time, where ε is the minimum curvature of a vertex, L is the length of the longest edge, is the smallest distance within a face between a vertex and a nonincident edge (minimum feature size of any face), and b is the maximum number of bits of an integer in a constant-size radical expression of a real number representing the polyhedron. We take special care in the model of computation and needed precision, showing that we can achieve the stated running time on a pointer machine supporting constant-time w-bit arithmetic operations where w = Ω(lg b)
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Partial Implementation of Max Flow and Min Cost Flow in Almost-Linear Time
No full textIn 2022, Chen et al. proposed an algorithm in \cite{main} that solves the min cost flow problem in time, where is the number of edges in the graph, is an upper bound on capacities and is an upper bound on costs. However, as far as the authors of \cite{main} know, no one has implemented their algorithm to date. In this paper, we discuss implementations of several key portions of the algorithm given in \cite{main}, including the justifications for specific implementation choices. For the portions of the algorithm that we do not implement, we provide stubs. We then go through the entire algorithm and calculate the term more precisely. Finally, we conclude with potential directions for future work in this area
1 X 1 Rush Hour with Fixed Blocks Is PSPACE-Complete
No full textConsider n²-1 unit-square blocks in an n × n square board, where each block is labeled as movable horizontally (only), movable vertically (only), or immovable - a variation of Rush Hour with only 1 × 1 cars and fixed blocks. We prove that it is PSPACE-complete to decide whether a given block can reach the left edge of the board, by reduction from Nondeterministic Constraint Logic via 2-color oriented Subway Shuffle. By contrast, polynomial-time algorithms are known for deciding whether a given block can be moved by one space, or when each block either is immovable or can move both horizontally and vertically. Our result answers a 15-year-old open problem by Tromp and Cilibrasi, and strengthens previous PSPACE-completeness results for Rush Hour with vertical 1 × 2 and horizontal 2 × 1 movable blocks and 4-color Subway Shuffle
Closed quasigeodesics, escaping from polygons, and conflict-free graph coloring
No full textThesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mathematics, 2018.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 56-58).Closed quasigeodesics. A closed quasigeodesic on the surface of a polyhedron is a loop which can everywhere locally be unfolded to a straight line: thus, it's straight on faces, uniquely determined on edges, and has as much flexibility at a vertex as that vertex's curvature. On any polyhedron, at least three closed quasigeodesics are known to exist, by a nonconstructive topological proof. We present an algorithm to find one on any convex polyhedron in time O(n2[epsilon]-2- 2Ll-1 ), where [epsilon] e is the minimum curvature of a vertex, l is the length of the longest side, and t is the smallest distance within a face between a vertex and an edge not containing it. Escaping from polygons. You move continuously at speed 1 in the interior of a polygon P, trying to reach the boundary. A zombie moves continuously at speed r outside P, trying to be at the boundary when you reach it. For what r can you escape and for what r can the zombie catch you? We give exact results for some P. For general P, we give a simple approximation to within a factor of roughly 9.2504. We also give a pseudopolynomial-time approximation scheme. Finally, we prove NP-hardness and hardness of approximation results for related problems with multiple zombies and/or humans. Conflict-free graph coloring. A conflict-free k-coloring of a graph assigns one of k different colors to some of the vertices such that, for every vertex v, there is a color that is assigned to exactly one vertex among v and v's neighbors. We study the natural problem of the conflict-free chromatic number XCF(G) (the smallest k for which conflict-free k-colorings exist), with a focus on planar graphs.by Adam Classen Hesterberg.Ph. D
Mario Kart Is Hard
No full textNintendo’s Mario Kart is perhaps the most popular racing video game franchise. Players race alone or against opponents to finish in the fastest time possible. Players can also use items to attack and defend from other racers. We prove two hardness results for generalized Mario Kart: deciding whether a driver can finish a course alone in some given time is NP-hard, and deciding whether a player can beat an opponent in a race is PSPACE-hard
Who witnesses The Witness? Finding witnesses in The Witness is hard and sometimes impossible
No full textWe analyze the computational complexity of the many types of pencil-and-paper-style puzzles featured in the 2016 puzzle video game The Witness. In all puzzles, the goal is to draw a path in a rectangular grid graph from a start vertex to a destination vertex. The different puzzle types place different constraints on the path: preventing some edges from being visited (broken edges); forcing some edges or vertices to be visited (hexagons); forcing some cells to have certain numbers of incident path edges (triangles); or forcing the regions formed by the path to be partially monochromatic (squares), have exactly two special cells (stars), or be singly covered by given shapes (polyominoes) and/or negatively counting shapes (antipolyominoes). We show that any one of these clue types (except the first) is enough to make path finding NP-complete ("witnesses exist but are hard to find"), even for rectangular boards. Furthermore, we show that a final clue type (antibody), which necessarily "cancels" the effect of another clue in the same region, makes path finding Sigma_2-complete ("witnesses do not exist"), even with a single antibody (combined with many anti/polyominoes), and the problem gets no harder with many antibodies
Extremal functions of excluded tensor products of permutation matrices
No full textAbstractFor a 0–1 matrix Q, ex(n,Q) is the maximum number of 1s in an n×n 0–1 matrix of which no submatrix majorizes Q. We show that if P is a permutation matrix and Q is arbitrary, then the order of growth of ex(n,P⊗Q) is almost the same as that of ex(n,Q), extending a result used in Marcus and Tardos’s proof of the Stanley–Wilf conjecture
Characterizing Universal Reconfigurability of Modular Pivoting Robots
No full textWe give both efficient algorithms and hardness results for reconfiguring between two connected configurations of modules in the hexagonal grid. The reconfiguration moves that we consider are "pivots", where a hexagonal module rotates around a vertex shared with another module. Following prior work on modular robots, we define two natural sets of hexagon pivoting moves of increasing power: restricted and monkey moves. When we allow both moves, we present the first universal reconfiguration algorithm, which transforms between any two connected configurations using O(n³) monkey moves. This result strongly contrasts the analogous problem for squares, where there are rigid examples that do not have a single pivoting move preserving connectivity. On the other hand, if we only allow restricted moves, we prove that the reconfiguration problem becomes PSPACE-complete. Moreover, we show that, in contrast to hexagons, the reconfiguration problem for pivoting squares is PSPACE-complete regardless of the set of pivoting moves allowed. In the process, we strengthen the reduction framework of Demaine et al. [FUN'18] that we consider of independent interest
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