Mittagsseminar (in cooperation with J. Lengler, A. Steger, and D. Steurer)

Date and Time: Tuesday, May 20, 2014, 12:15 pm

Duration: 45 minutes

Location: OAT S15/S16/S17

Speaker: Stephan Seebacher

Simple Wriggling is Hard unless You Are a Fat Hippo

Given a polygonal domain P with holes in it and two points s,f in P, is there a thick s-f path? Specifically, can a thick snake slither from the startpoint s to the food f?
We prove that it is NP-hard to decide whether two points in P can be connected with a wire. On the positive side, we show that snake's problem is length-tractable: if the sanke is fat, i.e. its length/width ratio is small, the shortest path can be computed in polynomial time.

Upcoming talks     |     All previous talks     |     Talks by speaker     |     Upcoming talks in iCal format (beta version!)

Previous talks by year:   2025  2024  2023  2022  2021  2020  2019  2018  2017  2016  2015  2014  2013  2012  2011  2010  2009  2008  2007  2006  2005  2004  2003  2002  2001  2000  1999  1998  1997  1996  

Information for students and suggested topics for student talks

Automatic MiSe System Software Version 1.4803M   |   admin login