Universal Guard Problems

Abstract

We provide a spectrum of results for the Universal Guard Problem, in which one is to obtain a small set of points ("guards") that are "universal" in their ability to guard any of a set of possible polygonal domains in the plane. 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.

28 pages, 19 figures, full version of extended abstract that appeared in the 27th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2016), 32:1-32:13