Maximum Area Axis-Aligned Square Packings

06/25/2018

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by   Hugo A. Akitaya, et al.

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Given a point set S={s_1,... , s_n} in the unit square U=[0,1]^2, an anchored square packing is a set of n interior-disjoint empty squares in U such that s_i is a corner of the ith square. The reach R(S) of S is the set of points that may be covered by such a packing, that is, the union of all empty squares anchored at points in S. It is shown that area(R(S))≥1/2 for every finite set S⊂ U, and this bound is the best possible. The region R(S) can be computed in O(n n) time. Finally, we prove that finding a maximum area anchored square packing is NP-complete. This is the first hardness proof for a geometric packing problem where the size of geometric objects in the packing is unrestricted.