Approximate Euclidean shortest paths in polygonal domains

Abstract

Given a set $\mathcal{P}$ of $h$ pairwise disjoint simple polygonal obstacles in $\mathbb{R}^2$ defined with $n$ vertices, we compute a sketch $Ω$ of $\mathcal{P}$ whose size is independent of $n$, depending only on $h$ and the input parameter $ε$. We utilize $Ω$ to compute a $(1+ε)$-approximate geodesic shortest path between the two given points in $O(n + h((\lg{n}) + (\lg{h})^{1+δ} + (\frac{1}ε\lg{\frac{h}ε})))$ time. Here, $ε$ is a user parameter, and $δ$ is a small positive constant (resulting from the time for triangulating the free space of $\cal P$ using the algorithm in \cite{journals/ijcga/Bar-YehudaC94}). Moreover, we devise a $(2+ε)$-approximation algorithm to answer two-point Euclidean distance queries for the case of convex polygonal obstacles.