arXiv subjects

Eva Rotenberg

Publications and source records attributed to Eva Rotenberg.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

HRsR: Hierarchical Rotation System Reconstruction

Surface reconstruction from point clouds remains challenging when both geometric fidelity and topology control are required. Rotation System Reconstruction (RsR) reconstructs triangle meshes from point clouds while explicitly controlling topology through the Euler characteristic, but its sequential edge insertion limits scalability. We present Hierarchical Rotation System Reconstruction (HRsR), which accelerates RsR through a hierarchical pipeline of edge collapses and vertex splits. HRsR first simplifies the input using a $k$-nearest neighbor graph, performs reconstruction on the reduced structure, and then restores geometric detail while preserving topology. To maintain geometric consistency, we incorporate intersection handling and quality-driven vertex split selection. Experiments demonstrate up to a $6\times$ speedup and more than $8\times$ reduction in memory usage over RsR, while achieving comparable reconstruction results.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2026

The Gallai Vertex Problem is $\Theta_2^p$-Complete

When a graph $G$ admits a vertex $v$ that is contained in all its longest paths, we call $v$ a Gallai vertex. These are named after Gallai, who in 1966 asked the question if it is true that every connected graph contains such a vertex. This was soon answered in the negative by Walther and Zamfirescu, who presented a graph in which every vertex is omitted by some longest path of the graph. In spite of its long history, the Gallai Vertex Problem, i.e. determining whether a graph has a Gallai vertex, was until now neither known to be NP- nor co-NP-hard. In this work, we show something much stronger, as we completely settle the computational complexity of determining whether a graph has a Gallai vertex: we show that it is complete for the complexity class $\Theta_2^p = \text{P}^{\text{NP}[\log n]}$. This class, also known as parallel access to NP, is a complexity class larger than NP situated just below the class $\Sigma^p_2$ in Stockmeyer's polynomial hierarchy. In more generality, the longest path transversal number of a connected graph is the minimum size of a set of vertices that intersects all its longest paths. I.e. if the graph has a Gallai vertex, its longest path transversal number is $1$. Thus, as a consequence of our theorem, the longest path transversal number of a graph cannot be approximated in polynomial time by a factor better than 2, unless $\text{P} = \text{NP}$. In fact, using related techniques, we show a strengthening of this result: For any constant $C$, if there is a graph with longest path transversal number $C$, then there is no polynomial time algorithm for approximating the longest path transversal number by a factor better than $C$, unless $\text{P} = \text{NP}$. In particular, this excludes approximation by a factor below $3$. Similar results hold for the longest cycle transversal.

cs.DM↗

arXiv2026

Instance and Universally Optimal Bounds for Imprecise Pareto Fronts

In the imprecise geometry model, the input is an imprecise point set, which is a family of regions $F = (R_1, \ldots,R_n)$, where for each $R_i$ one may retrieve the true point $p_i \in R_i$. By preprocessing $F$, we can construct the output, in our case the Pareto front, on $P$ faster. We efficiently construct the Pareto front of an imprecise point set in the plane. Efficiency is interpreted in two ways: minimizing (i) the number of retrievals, and (ii) the computation time used to determine the set of regions that must be retrieved and to construct the Pareto front. We present an algorithm to construct the Pareto front for possibly overlapping rectangles that is \emph{instance-optimal} with respect to the number of retrievals, meaning that for every fixed input $(F, P)$, there is no algorithm that retrieves asymptotically fewer regions to compute the output. This is a strong algorithmic quality, as it means that our algorithm is competitive even to clairvoyant algorithms which know a correct guess of the output and only have to verify its correctness. In terms of algorithmic running time, instance-optimality is provably unobtainable. We instead present an algorithm which is within a $\log n$-factor of instance-optimality. This generalizes earlier results to overlapping input regions, at only a minor cost in running time. For unit squares, we present an algorithm that is not only instance-optimal in the number of retrievals, but also \emph{universally} optimal in terms of running time, meaning that for any fixed set of regions $F$, no algorithm has a better worst-case running time for all possible point sets $P$. This is the first universally optimal algorithm for overlapping planar input. Compared to previous work, this result improves the degree of overlap, the preprocessing time, the number of retrievals, and the running time.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2026

A dynamic $(1+\varepsilon)$-spanner for disk intersection graphs

We maintain a $(1+\varepsilon)$-spanner over the disk intersection graph of a dynamic set of disks. We restrict all disks to have their diameter in $[4,\Psi]$ for some fixed and known $\Psi$. The resulting $(1+\varepsilon)$-spanner has size $O(n \varepsilon^{-2} \log \Psi \log (\varepsilon^{-1}))$, where $n$ is the present number of disks. We develop a novel use of persistent data structures to dynamically maintain our $(1+\varepsilon)$-spanner. Our approach requires $O(\varepsilon^{-2} n \log^4 n \log \Psi)$ space and has an $O( \left( \frac{\Psi}{\varepsilon} \right)^2 \log^4 n \log^2 \Psi \log^2 (\varepsilon^{-1}))$ expected amortised update time. For constant $\varepsilon$ and $\Psi$, this spanner has near-linear size, uses near-linear space and has polylogarithmic update time. Furthermore, we observe that for any $\varepsilon < 1$, our spanner also serves as a connectivity data structure. With a slight adaptation of our techniques, this leads to better bounds for dynamically supporting connectivity queries in a disk intersection graph. In particular, we improve the space usage when compared to the dynamic data structure of (Baumann et al., DCG'24), replacing the linear dependency on $\Psi$ by a polylogarithmic dependency. Finally, we generalise our results to $d$-dimensional hypercubes.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2026

Near-Optimal Working-Set Heaps and Dijkstra on Pointer Machines

A heap is a dynamic data structure that stores a set of labeled values under the following operations: pop returns the minimum value of the heap, Push($x_i$) pushes a new value $x_i$ onto the heap, and DecreaseKey($i$, $v$) decreases the value $x_i$ to $v$. A working-set heap is a heap that supports the $x_i \gets$ pop$()$ operation in $O(\log \Gamma(x_i) )$ time where $\Gamma(x_i)$ is the size of the \emph{working set}: the number of elements that were pushed onto the heap while $x_i$ was in the heap. The goal of working set heap design is to maintain the working set property while minimizing the overhead of the Push and DecreaseKey operations. On a word RAM, there exist working set heaps that support Push and DecreaseKey in amortized constant time. In this paper, we show via a simple construction that pointer machines, one of the most general and least-assuming computational models, support working set heaps that support Push in amortized constant time and DecreaseKey in inverse-Ackermann time. A by-product of this analysis is that Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm can be near-universally optimal on a pointer machine -- incurring only an additive $O(m \, \alpha(m))$ overhead compared to the optimal running time for distance ordering, where $m$ denotes the number of edges in the graph.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2026

Near-tight Bounds for Computing the Fr\'echet Distance in d-Dimensional Grid Graphs and the Implications for {\lambda}-low Dense Curves

The Fr\'echet distance is a popular distance measure between trajectories or curves in space, or between walks in graphs. We study computing the Fr\'echet distance between walks in the $d$-dimensional grid graphs, i.e. $\mathbb{Z}^d$ where points share an edge if they differ by one in one coordinate. We give an algorithm, that for two simple paths on $n$ vertices, $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximates the Fr\'echet distance in time $\widetilde{O}((\frac{n}{\varepsilon})^{2-2/d} +n)$. We complement this by a near-matching fine-grained lower bound: for constant dimensions $d \geq 3$, there is no $O((\varepsilon^{2/d}(\frac{n}{\varepsilon})^{2-2/d})^{1-\delta})$ algorithm for any $\delta>0$ unless the Orthogonal Vector Hypothesis fails. Thus, our results are tight up to a factor $\varepsilon^{2/d}$ and $\log(n)$-factors. We extend our results to imbalanced lower and upper bounds, where the curves have $n$ and $m$ vertices respectively, and also obtain near-tight bounds. Driemel, Har-Peled and Wenk [DCG'12] studied \emph{realistic assumptions} for curves to speed up Fr\'echet distance computation. One of these assumptions is $\lambda$-low density and they can compute a $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximation between $\lambda$-low dense curves in time $\widetilde{O}( \varepsilon^{-2} \lambda^2 n^{2(1-1/d)})$. By adapting our lower bound, we show that their algorithm has a tight dependency on $n$ and a tight dependency on $\varepsilon$ as $d$ goes to infinity. A gap remains in terms of $\lambda$.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2026

Engineering Fully Dynamic Convex Hulls

We present a new fully dynamic algorithm for maintaining convex hulls under insertions and deletions while supporting geometric queries. Our approach combines the logarithmic method with a deletion-only convex hull data structure, achieving amortised update times of $O(\log n \log \log n)$ and query times of $O(\log^2 n)$. We provide a robust and non-trivial implementation that supports point-location queries, a challenging and non-decomposable class of convex hull queries. We evaluate our implementation against the state of the art, including a new naive baseline that rebuilds the convex hull whenever an update affects it. On hulls that include polynomially many data points (e.g. $\Theta(n^\varepsilon)$ for some $\varepsilon$), such as the ones that often occur in practice, our method outperforms all other techniques. Update-heavy workloads strongly favour our approach, which is in line with our theoretical guarantees. Yet, our method remains competitive all the way down to when the update to query ratio is $1$ to $10$. Experiments on real-world data sets furthermore reveal that existing fully dynamic techniques suffer from significant robustness issues. In contrast, our implementation remains stable across all tested inputs.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2026

The Presort Hierarchy for Geometric Problems

Many fundamental problems in computational geometry admit no algorithm running in $o(n \log n)$ time for $n$ planar input points, via classical reductions from sorting. Prominent examples include the computation of convex hulls, quadtrees, onion layer decompositions, Euclidean minimum spanning trees, KD-trees, Voronoi diagrams, and decremental closest-pair. A classical result shows that, given $n$ points sorted along a single direction, the convex hull can be constructed in linear time. Subsequent works established that for all of the other above problems, this information does not suffice. In 1989, Aggarwal, Guibas, Saxe, and Shor asked: Under which conditions can a Voronoi diagram be computed in $o(n \log n)$ time? Since then, the question of whether sorting along TWO directions enables a $o(n \log n)$-time algorithm for such problems has remained open and has been repeatedly mentioned in the literature. In this paper, we introduce the Presort Hierarchy: A problem is 1-Presortable if, given a sorting along one axis, it permits a (possibly randomised) $o(n \log n)$-time algorithm. It is 2-Presortable if sortings along both axes suffice. It is Presort-Hard otherwise. Our main result is that quadtrees, and by extension Delaunay triangulations, Voronoi diagrams, and Euclidean minimum spanning trees, are 2-Presortable: we present an algorithm with expected running time $O(n \sqrt{\log n})$. This addresses the longstanding open problem posed by Aggarwal, Guibas, Saxe, and Shor (albeit randomised). We complement this result by showing that some of the other above geometric problems are also 2-Presortable or Presort-Hard.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2025

On computing the (exact) Fr\'echet distance with a frog

The continuous Frechet distance between two polygonal curves is classically computed by exploring their free space diagram. Recently, Har-Peled, Raichel, and Robson [SoCG'25] proposed a radically different approach: instead of directly traversing the continuous free space, they approximate the distance by computing paths in a discrete graph derived from the discrete free space, recursively bisecting edges until the discrete distance converges to the continuous Frechet distance. They implement this so-called frog-based technique and report substantial practical speedups over the state of the art. We revisit the frog-based approach and address three of its limitations. First, the method does not compute the Frechet distance exactly. Second, the recursive bisection procedure only introduces the monotonicity events required to realise the Frechet distance asymptotically, that is, only in the limit. Third, the applied simplification technique is heuristic. Motivated by theoretical considerations, we develop new techniques that guarantee exactness, polynomial-time convergence, and near-optimal lossless simplifications. We provide an open-source C++ implementation of our variant. Our primary contribution is an extensive empirical evaluation. As expected, exact computation introduces overhead and increases the median running time. Yet, our method is often faster in the worst case, the slowest ten percent of instances, or even on average due to its convergence guarantees. More surprisingly, in our experiments, the implementation of Bringmann, Kuennemann, and Nusser [SoCG'19] consistently outperforms all frog-based approaches in practice. This appears to contrast published claims of the efficiency of the frog-based techniques. These results thereby provide nuanced perspective on frogs: highlighting both the theoretical appeal, but also the practical limitations.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2025

Tight Adaptive Bounds for Convex Hulls

Adaptive sorting algorithms exploit existing order in the input to obtain better-than-worst-case running times. A classical example is sorting by runs: if the input can be partitioned into increasing runs of sizes $s_1, \ldots, s_k$ then the \emph{run-length entropy} is $O(\sum_i s_i \log \frac{n}{s_i})$ and there exist many Merge-sort algorithms which run in this time. One can show optimality of such algorithms, by showing that for a fixed sequence of run sizes $s_1, \ldots, s_k$ the worst-case running time of any algorithm lies in $\Omega(\sum_i s_i \log \frac{n}{s_i})$. Recently, Eppstein, Goodrich, Illickan, and To introduced algorithms for Pareto fronts, planar convex hulls, and related problems whose running times improve when the input order contains few sorted runs. They analyze the running time algorithm by defining a \emph{Range Partition Entropy} which is a function that depends both the order of the input and the geometric input points. They ask whether matching adaptive lower bounds analogous to those used for run-length entropy can be shown. We provide matching adaptive lower bounds for constructing a convex hull or a Pareto front.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2025

The Complexity of Stackelberg Pricing Games

We consider Stackelberg pricing games, which are also known as bilevel pricing problems, or combinatorial price-setting problems. This family of problems consists of games between two players: the leader and the follower. There is a market that is partitioned into two parts: the part of the leader and the part of the leader's competitors. The leader controls one part of the market and can freely set the prices for products. By contrast, the prices of the competitors' products are fixed and known in advance. The follower, then, needs to solve a combinatorial optimization problem in order to satisfy their own demands, while comparing the leader's offers to the offers of the competitors. Therefore, the leader has to hit the intricate balance of making an attractive offer to the follower, while at the same time ensuring that their own profit is maximized. Pferschy, Nicosia, Pacifici, and Schauer considered the Stackelberg pricing game where the follower solves a knapsack problem. They raised the question whether this problem is complete for the second level of the polynomial hierarchy, i.e., $\Sigma^p_2$-complete. The same conjecture was also made by B\"ohnlein, Schaudt, and Schauer. In this paper, we positively settle this conjecture. Moreover, we show that this result holds actually in a much broader context: The Stackelberg pricing game is $\Sigma^p_2$-complete for over 50 NP-complete problems, including most classics such as TSP, vertex cover, clique, subset sum, etc. This result falls in line of recent meta-theorems about higher complexity in the polynomial hierarchy by Gr\"une and Wulf.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2025

Tight Better-Than-Worst-Case Bounds for Element Distinctness and Set Intersection

The element distinctness problem takes as input a list $I$ of $n$ values from a totally ordered universe and the goal is to decide whether $I$ contains any duplicates. It is a well-studied problem with a classical worst-case $\Omega(n \log n)$ comparison-based lower bound by Fredman. At first glance, this lower bound appears to rule out any algorithm more efficient than the naive approach of sorting $I$ and comparing adjacent elements. However, upon closer inspection, the $\Omega(n \log n)$ bound does not apply if the input has many duplicates. We therefore ask: Are there comparison-based lower bounds for element distinctness that are sensitive to the amount of duplicates in the input? To address this question, we derive instance-specific lower bounds. For any input instance $I$, we represent the combinatorial structure of the duplicates in $I$ by an undirected graph $G(I)$ that connects identical elements. Each such graph $G$ is a union of cliques, and we study algorithms by their worst-case running time over all inputs $I'$ with $G(I') \cong G$. We establish an adversarial lower bound showing that, for any deterministic algorithm $\mathcal{A}$, there exists a graph $G$ and an algorithm $\mathcal{A}'$ that, for all inputs $I$ with $G(I) \cong G$, is a factor $O(\log \log n)$ faster than $\mathcal{A}$. Consequently, no deterministic algorithm can be $o(\log \log n)$-competitive for all graphs $G$. We complement this with an $O(\log \log n)$-competitive deterministic algorithm, thereby obtaining tight bounds for element distinctness that go beyond classical worst-case analysis. We subsequently study the related problem of set intersection. We show that no deterministic set intersection algorithm can be $o(\log n)$-competitive, and provide an $O(\log n)$-competitive deterministic algorithm. This shows a separation between element distinctness and the set intersection problem.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2025

The Contiguous Art Gallery Problem is in {\Theta}(n log n)

Recently, a natural variant of the Art Gallery problem, known as the \emph{Contiguous Art Gallery problem} was proposed. Given a simple polygon $P$, the goal is to partition its boundary $\partial P$ into the smallest number of contiguous segments such that each segment is completely visible from some point in $P$. Unlike the classical Art Gallery problem, which is NP-hard, this variant is polynomial-time solvable. At SoCG~2025, three independent works presented algorithms for this problem, each achieving a running time of $O(k n^5 \log n)$ (or $O(n^6\log n)$), where $k$ is the size of an optimal solution. Interestingly, these results were obtained using entirely different approaches, yet all led to roughly the same asymptotic complexity, suggesting that such a running time might be inherent to the problem. We show that this is not the case. In the real RAM-model, the prevalent model in computational geometry, we present an $O(n \log n)$-time algorithm, achieving an $O(k n^4)$ factor speed-up over the previous state-of-the-art. We also give a straightforward sorting-based lower bound by reducing from the set intersection problem. We thus show that the Contiguous Art Gallery problem is in $\Theta(n \log n)$.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2025

Simpler is Faster: Practical Distance Reporting by Sorting Along a Space-Filling Curve

Range reporting is a classical problem in computational geometry. A (rectangular) reporting data structure stores a point set $P$, such that, given a (rectangular) query region $\Delta$, it returns all points in $P \cap \Delta$. A variety of data structures support such queries with differing asymptotic guarantees such as k-d trees, range trees, R-trees, and quadtrees. A common variant of range queries are distance reporting queries, where the input is a query point $q$ and a radius $\delta$, and the goal is to report all points in $P$ within distance $\delta$ of $q$. Such queries frequently arise as subroutines in geometric data structures. Practical implementations typically answer distance queries through rectangular range queries using the data structures listed before. This paper revisits a simple and practical heuristic for distance reporting, originally proposed in TCS'97: sort the input point set~$P$ along a space-filling curve. Queries then reduce to scanning at most four contiguous ranges along the sorted curve. The fact that sorting along a space-filling curve is beneficial for range reporting is well-known. Many implementations use this technique to speed up their query and construction times. The point that this paper makes is subtle, but interesting: we argue that often, it is the space-filling curve rather than the overall data structure that provides the performance benefits. Thus, we offer a simple but effective alternative: only sort $P$ along a space-filling curve instead. We compare this approach to eight range searching implementations, across an elaborate test suite of real-world and synthetic data. Our experiments confirm this simple 200-line code approach out-performs all high-end implementations in terms of space usage and construction time. It presents almost always the best query times. In a dynamic setting, our approach dominates in performance.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2025

Practical Insertion-Only Convex Hull

Convex hull data structures are fundamental in computational geometry. We study insertion-only data structures, supporting various containment and intersection queries. When $P$ is sorted by $x$- or $y$-coordinate, convex hulls can be constructed in linear time using classical algorithms such as Graham scan. We investigate a variety of methods tailored to the insertion-only setting. We explore a broad selection of trade-offs involving robustness, memory access patterns, and space usage, providing an extensive evaluation of both existing and novel techniques. Logarithmic-time methods rely on pointer-based tree structures, which suffer in practice due to poor memory locality. Motivated by this, we develop a vector-based solution inspired by Overmars' logarithmic method. Our structure has worse asymptotic bounds, supporting queries in $O(\log^2 n)$ time, but stores data in $O(\log n)$ contiguous vectors, greatly improving cache performance. Through empirical evaluation on real-world and synthetic data sets, we uncover surprising trends. Let $h$ denote the size of the convex hull. We show that a na\"ive $O(h)$ insertion-only algorithm based on Graham scan consistently outperforms both theoretical and practical state-of-the-art methods under realistic workloads, even on data sets with rather large convex hulls. While tree-based methods with $O(\log h)$ update times offer solid theoretical guarantees, they are never optimal in practice. In contrast, our vector-based logarithmic method, despite its theoretically inferior bounds, is highly competitive across all tested scenarios. It is optimal whenever the convex hull becomes large.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2025

A Combinatorial Proof of Universal Optimality for Computing a Planar Convex Hull

For a planar point set $P$, its convex hull is the smallest convex polygon that encloses all points in $P$. The construction of the convex hull from an array $I_P$ containing $P$ is a fundamental problem in computational geometry. By sorting $I_P$ in lexicographical order, one can construct the convex hull of $P$ in $O(n \log n)$ time which is worst-case optimal. Standard worst-case analysis, however, has been criticized as overly coarse or pessimistic, and researchers search for more refined analyses. Universal analysis provides an even stronger guarantee. It fixes a point set $P$ and considers the maximum running time across all permutations $I_P$ of $P$. Afshani, Barbay, Chan [FOCS'07] prove that the convex hull construction algorithm by Kirkpatrick, McQueen, and Seidel is universally optimal. Their proof restricts the model of computation to any algebraic decision tree model where the test functions have at most constant degree and at most a constant number of arguments. They rely upon involved algebraic arguments to construct a lower bound for each point set $P$ that matches the universal running time of [SICOMP'86]. We provide a different proof of universal optimality. Instead of restricting the computational model, we further specify the output. We require as output (1) the convex hull, and (2) for each internal point of $P$ a witness for it being internal. Our argument is shorter, perhaps simpler, and applicable in more general models of computation.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2025

Simpler Universally Optimal Dijkstra

Let G be a weighted (directed) graph with n vertices and m edges. Given a source vertex s, Dijkstra's algorithm computes the shortest path lengths from s to all other vertices in O(m + n log n) time. This bound is known to be worst-case optimal via a reduction to sorting. Theoretical computer science has developed numerous fine-grained frameworks for analyzing algorithmic performance beyond standard worst-case analysis, such as instance optimality and output sensitivity. Haeupler et al. [FOCS '24] consider the notion of universal optimality, a refined complexity measure that accounts for both the graph topology and the edge weights. For a fixed graph topology, the universal running time of a weighted graph algorithm is defined as its worst-case running time over all possible edge weightings of G. An algorithm is universally optimal if no other algorithm achieves a better asymptotic universal running time on any particular graph topology. They show that Dijkstra's algorithm can be made universally optimal by replacing the heap with a custom data structure. We revisit their result. We introduce a simple heap property called timestamp optimality, where the cost of popping an element x is logarithmic in the number of elements inserted between pushing and popping x. We show that timestamp optimal heaps are not only easier to define but also easier to implement. Using these timestamps, we provide a significantly simpler proof that Dijkstra's algorithm, with the right kind of heap, is universally optimal.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2025

Fr\'echet Distance in Unweighted Planar Graphs

The Fr\'echet distance is a distance measure between trajectories in $\Bbb{R}^d$ or walks in a graph $G$. Given constant-time shortest path queries, the Discrete Fr\'echet distance $D_G(P, Q)$ between two walks $P$ and $Q$ can be computed in $O(|P| \cdot |Q|)$ time using a dynamic program. Driemel, van der Hoog, and Rotenberg [SoCG'22] show that for weighted planar graphs this approach is likely tight, as there can be no strongly-subquadratic algorithm to compute a $1.01$-approximation of $D_G(P, Q)$ unless the Orthogonal Vector Hypothesis (OVH) fails. Such quadratic-time conditional lower bounds are common to many Fr\'echet distance variants. However, they can be circumvented by assuming that the input comes from some well-behaved class: There exist $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximations, both in weighted graphs and in $\Bbb{R}^d$, that take near-linear time for $c$-packed or $\kappa$-straight walks in the graph. In $\Bbb{R}^d$ there also exists a near-linear time algorithm to compute the Fr\'echet distance whenever all input edges are long compared to the distance. We consider computing the Fr\'echet distance in unweighted planar graphs. We show that there exist no strongly-subquadratic $1.25$-approximations of the discrete Fr\'echet distance between two disjoint simple paths in an unweighted planar graph in strongly subquadratic time, unless OVH fails. This improves the previous lower bound, both in terms of generality and approximation factor. We subsequently show that adding graph structure circumvents this lower bound: If the graph is a regular tiling with unit-weighted edges, then there exists an $\tilde{O}((|P| + |Q|)^{1.5})$-time algorithm to compute $D_G(P, Q)$. Our result has natural implications in the plane, as it allows us to define a new class of well-behaved curves that facilitate $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximations of their discrete Fr\'echet distance in subquadratic time.

cs.CG↗