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The Fréchet distance is a well studied and very popular measure of similarity of two curves. The best known algorithms have quadratic time complexity, which has recently been shown to be optimal assuming the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH) [Bringmann, FOCS'14]. To overcome the worst-case quadratic time barrier, restricted classes of curves have been studied that attempt to capture realistic input curves. The most popular such class are -packed curves, for which the Fréchet distance has a -approximation in time [Driemel et al., DCG'12]. In dimension this cannot be improved to for any unless SETH fails [Bringmann, FOCS'14]. In this paper, exploiting properties that prevent stronger lower bounds, we present an improved algorithm with time complexity . This improves upon the algorithm by Driemel et al. for any . Moreover, our algorithm's dependence on , and is optimal in high dimensions apart from lower order factors, unless SETH fails. Our main new ingredients are as follows: For filling the classical free-space diagram we project short subcurves onto a line, which yields one-dimensional separated curves with roughly the same pairwise distances between vertices. Then we tackle this special case in near-linear time by carefully extending a greedy algorithm for the Fréchet distance of one-dimensional separated curves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variation on the classical polygon illumination problem was introduced in [Aichholzer et al. EuroCG'09]. In this variant light sources are replaced by wireless devices called -modems, which can penetrate a fixed number , of 'walls'. A point in the interior of a polygon is 'illuminated' by a -modem if the line segment joining them intersects at most edges of the polygon. It is easy to construct polygons of vertices where the number of -modems required to illuminate all interior points is . However, no non-trivial upper bound is known. In this paper we prove that the number of kmodems required to illuminate any polygon of vertices is . For the cases of illuminating an orthogonal polygon or a set of disjoint orthogonal segments, we give a tighter bound of . Moreover, we present an time algorithm to achieve this bound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we consider the ip operation for combinatorial pointed pseudotriangulations where faces have size 3 or 4, so-called combinatorial 4-PPTs.We show that every combinatorial 4-PPT is stretchable to a geometric pseudo-triangulation, which in general is not the case if faces may have size larger than 4. Moreover, we prove that the ip graph of combinatorial 4-PPTs is connected and has diameter O( n2), even in the case of labeled vertices with fixed outer face. For this case we provide an Ω(n log n) lower bound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let S be a set of n points in ℝd in general position. A set ℋ of k-flats is called an mk-stabber of S if the relative interior of any m-simplex with vertices in S is intersected by at least one element of ℋ. In this paper we give lower and upper bounds on the size of minimum mk-stabbers of point sets in ℝd and in general position. We study mainly mk-stabbers in the plane and in ℝ3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given a set S of n points in the plane, how many universal guards are sometimes necessary and always sufficient to guard any simple polygon with vertex set S? We call this problem a Universal Guard Problem and provide a spectrum of results. We give upper and lower bounds on the number of universal guards that are always sufficient to guard all polygons having a given set of n vertices, or to guard all polygons in a given set of k polygons on an n-point vertex set. Our upper bound proofs include algorithms to construct universal guard sets of the respective cardinalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deciding 3-colorability for general plane graphs is known to be an NP-complete problem. However, for certain families of graphs, like triangulations, polynomial time algorithms exist. We consider the family of pseudo-triangulations, which are a generalization of triangulations, and prove NP-completeness for this class. This result also holds if we bound their face degree to four, or exclusively consider pointed pseudo-triangulations with maximum face degree five. In contrast to these completeness results, we show that pointed pseudo-triangulations with maximum face degree four are always 3-colorable. An according 3-coloring can be found in linear time. Some complexity results relating to the rank of pseudo-triangulations are also given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1979 Conway, Croft, Erdős and Guy proved that every set S of n points in general position in the plane determines at least obtuse angles and also presented a special set of n points to show the upper bound on the minimum number of obtuse angles among all sets S. We prove that every set S of n points in convex position determines at least obtuse angles, hence matching the upper bound (up to sub-cubic terms) in this case. Also on the other side, for point sets with low rectilinear crossing number, the lower bound on the minimum number of obtuse angles is improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]