Computational-geometric methods for polygonal approximations of a curve

Abstract

In cartography, computer graphics, pattern recognition, etc., we often encounter the problem of approximating a given finer piecewise linear curve by another coarser piecewise linear curve consisting of fewer line segments. In connection with this problem, a number of papers have been published, but it seems that the problem itself has not been well modelled from the standpoint of specific applications, nor has a nice algorithm, nice from the computational-geometric viewpoint, been proposed. In the present paper, we first consider (i) the problem of approximating a piecewise linear curve by another whose vertices are a subset of the vertices of the former, and show that an optimum solution of this problem can be found in a polynomial time. We also mention recent results on related problems by several researchers including the authors themselves. We then pose (ii) a problem of covering a sequence of n points by a minimum number of rectangles with a given width, and present an O(n long n)-time algorithm by making use of some fundamental established techniques in computational geometry. Furthermore, an O(mn(logn)2)-time algorithm is presented for finding the minimum width w such that a sequence of n points can be covered by at most m rectangles with width w. Finally, (iii) several related problems are discussed.