Computing the Fréchet Distance Between Uncertain Curves in One Dimension

Kevin Buchin, Maarten Löffler, Tim Ophelders, Aleksandr Popov, Jérôme Urhausen, Kevin Verbeek

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

We consider the problem of computing the Fréchet distance between two curves for which the exact locations of the vertices are unknown. Each vertex may be placed in a given uncertainty region for that vertex, and the objective is to place vertices so as to minimise the Fréchet distance. This problem was recently shown to be NP-hard in 2D, and it is unclear how to compute an optimal vertex placement at all.

We give a polynomial-time algorithm for 1D curves with intervals as uncertainty regions. In contrast, we show that the problem is NP-hard in 1D in the case that vertices are placed to maximise the Fréchet distance.

We also study the weak Fréchet distance between uncertain curves. While finding the optimal placement of vertices seems more difficult than for the regular Fréchet distance—and indeed we can easily prove that the problem is NP-hard in 2D—the optimal placement of vertices in 1D can be computed in polynomial time. Finally, we investigate the discrete weak Fréchet distance, for which, somewhat surprisingly, the problem is NP-hard already in 1D.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAlgorithms and Data Structures
Subtitle of host publication17th International Symposium, WADS 2021, Virtual Event, August 9–11, 2021, Proceedings
EditorsAnna Lubiw, Mohammad Salavatipour
Place of PublicationCham, Switzerland
PublisherSpringer Nature
Pages243–257
Number of pages15
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-030-83508-8
ISBN (Print)978-3-030-83507-1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 11 Aug 2021
Event17th Algorithms and Data Structures Symposium - Online, Halifax, Canada
Duration: 9 Aug 202111 Aug 2021
Conference number: 17
https://projects.cs.dal.ca/wads2021/

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume12808 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference17th Algorithms and Data Structures Symposium
Abbreviated titleWADS 2021
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityHalifax
Period9/08/2111/08/21
Internet address

Funding

Acknowledgements. Research on the topic of this paper was initiated at the 5th Workshop on Applied Geometric Algorithms (AGA 2020) in Langbroek, Netherlands. Maarten Löffler is partially supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under project no. 614.001.504 and no. 628.011.005. Aleksandr Popov is supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under project no. 612.001.801. Jérôme Urhausen is supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under project no. 612.001.651.

Keywords

  • curves
  • uncertainty
  • Fréchet distance
  • 1D
  • hardness
  • weak Fréchet distance

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