Morphing Planar Graph Drawings with Bent Edges

Abstract

Abstract We give an algorithm to morph between two planar drawings of a graph, preserving planarity, but allowing edges to bend. The morph uses a polynomial number of elementary steps, where each elementary step is a linear morph that moves each vertex in a straight line at uniform speed. Although there are planarity-preserving morphs that do not require edge bends, it is an open problem to find polynomial-size morphs. We achieve polynomial size at the expense of edge bends.