The Maximum Weight Independent Set of Polygons problem is a fundamental problem in computational geometry. Given a set of weighted polygons in the 2-dimensional plane, the goal is to find a set of pairwise non-overlapping polygons with maximum total weight. Due to its wide range of applications, the MWISP problem and its special cases have been extensively studied both in the approximation algorithms and the computational geometry community. Despite a lot of research, its general case is not well-understood. Currently the best known polynomial time algorithm achieves an approximation ratio of n^(epsilon) [Fox and Pach, SODA 2011], and it is not even clear whether the problem is APX-hard. We present a (1+epsilon)-approximation algorithm, assuming that each polygon in the input has at most a polylogarithmic number of vertices. Our algorithm has quasi-polynomial running time. We use a recently introduced framework for approximating maximum weight independent set in geometric intersection graphs. The framework has been used to construct a QPTAS in the much simpler case of axis-parallel rectangles. We extend it in two ways, to adapt it to our much more general setting. First, we show that its technical core can be reduced to the case when all input polygons are triangles. Secondly, we replace its key technical ingredient which is a method to partition the plane using only few edges such that the objects stemming from the optimal solution are evenly distributed among the resulting faces and each object is intersected only a few times. Our new procedure for this task is not more complex than the original one, and it can handle the arising difficulties due to the arbitrary angles of the polygons. Note that already this obstacle makes the known analysis for the above framework fail. Also, in general it is not well understood how to handle this difficulty by efficient approximation algorithms.
For the general case, the best known result is a @math -approximation algorithm for collections of curves due to Fox and Pach @cite_16 , which assumes that any two curves intersect only @math times, i.e., that they are @math -intersecting. Prior to this, Agarwal and Mustafa presented an algorithm for the special case of straight line segments that computes an independent set of size @math @cite_22 , which yields a worst case approximation ratio of @math . Note that it is @math -hard to decide whether a given graph can be represented as an intersection graph of a collection of curves (i.e., is a string graph) @cite_2 .
@cite_16 @cite_22 @cite_2
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Computing the maximum number of disjoint elements in a collection C of geometric objects is a classical problem in computational geometry with applications ranging from frequency assignment in cellular networks to map labeling in computational cartography. The problem is equivalent to finding the independence number, (GC), of the intersection graph GC of C, obtained by connecting two elements of C with an edge if and only if their intersection is nonempty. This is known to be an NP-hard task even for systems of segments in the plane with at most two different slopes. The best known polynomial time approximation algorithm for systems of arbitrary segments is due to Agarwal and Mustafa, and returns in the worst case an n1 2+o(1)-approximation for . Using extensions of the Lipton-Tarjan separator theorem, we improve this result and present, for every e > 0, a polynomial time algorithm for computing (GC) with approximation ratio at most ne. In contrast, for general graphs, for any e > 0 it is NP-hard to approximate the independence number within a factor of n1e. We also give a subexponential time exact algorithm for computing the independence number of intersection graphs of arcwise connected sets in the plane. Multiple objects in the plane are called pseudodisks if the boundaries of any two of them intersect transversely at most twice. Given a set of @math (possibly intersecting) convex pseudodisks of @math complexity each and two points @math and @math in the plane, we present an efficient algorithm for computing a shortest @math -to- @math path avoiding the pseudodisks. After the union of the pseudodisks is computed, which can be done in @math randomized time or @math deterministic time, our algorithm runs in @math deterministic time, where @math is the size of the extended visibility graph of the union of the pseudodisks. Note that @math in the worst case. In over two decades, the previously best algorithms for this problem have not improved on the bound of @math time, even when all the pseudodisks are pairwise disjoint disks. Our technique is also applicable to a motion planning problem of finding a shortest path to translate a convex object in the plane from one location to anot... A feedback vertex set of an undirected graph is a subset of vertices that intersects with the vertex set of each cycle in the graph. Given an undirected graph G with n vertices and weights on its vertices, polynomial-time algorithms are provided for approximating the problem of finding a feedback vertex set of G with smallest weight. When the weights of all vertices in G are equal, the performance ratio attained by these algorithms is 4-(2 n). This improves a previous algorithm which achieved an approximation factor of @math for this case. For general vertex weights, the performance ratio becomes @math where @math denotes the maximum degree in G. For the special case of planar graphs this ratio is reduced to 10. An interesting special case of weighted graphs where a performance ratio of 4-(2 n) is achieved is the one where a prescribed subset of the vertices, so-called blackout vertices, is not allowed to participate in any feedback vertex set. It is shown how these algorithms can improve the search performance for constraint satisfaction problems. An application in the area of Bayesian inference of graphs with blackout vertices is also presented.