We study versions of cop and robber pursuit-evasion games on the visibility graphs of polygons, and inside polygons with straight and curved sides. Each player has full information about the other player's location, players take turns, and the robber is captured when the cop arrives at the same point as the robber. In visibility graphs we show the cop can always win because visibility graphs are dismantlable, which is interesting as one of the few results relating visibility graphs to other known graph classes. We extend this to show that the cop wins games in which players move along straight line segments inside any polygon and, more generally, inside any simply connected planar region with a reasonable boundary. Essentially, our problem is a type of pursuit-evasion using the link metric rather than the Euclidean metric, and our result provides an interesting class of infinite cop-win graphs.
There is also a vast literature on graph-based pursuit-evasion games, where players move continuously and have no knowledge of other players' positions. The terms graph searching'' and graph sweeping'' are used, and the concept is related to tree-width. For surveys see @cite_0 @cite_20 .
@cite_0 @cite_20
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This papers surveys some of the work done on trying to capture an intruder in a graph. If the intruder may be located only at vertices, the term searching is employed. If the intruder may be located at vertices or along edges, the term sweeping is employed. There are a wide variety of applications for searching and sweeping. Old results, new results and active research directions are discussed. Graph searching encompasses a wide variety of combinatorial problems related to the problem of capturing a fugitive residing in a graph using the minimum number of searchers. In this annotated bibliography, we give an elementary classification of problems and results related to graph searching and provide a source of bibliographical references on this field.