On the Boundary Complexity of the Union of Fat Triangles

Abstract

A triangle is said to be {\it $\delta$-fat\/} if its smallest angle is at least $\delta>0$. A connected component of the complement of the union of a family of triangles is called a {\it hole}. It is shown that any family of n $\delta$-fat triangles in the plane determines at most $O\left(\frac{n}{\delta}\log\frac{2}{\delta}\right)$ holes. This improves on some earlier bounds of Efrat, Rote, Sharir, and Matousek, et al. Solving a problem of Agarwal and Bern, we also give a general upper bound for the number of holes determined by n triangles in the plane with given angles. As a corollary, we obtain improved upper bounds for the boundary complexity of the union of fat polygons in the plane, which, in turn, leads to better upper bounds for the running times of some known algorithms for motion planning, for finding a separator line for a set of segments, etc.