Bottleneck Convex Subsets: Finding $k$ Large Convex Sets in a Point Set

Abstract

Chvátal and Klincsek (1980) gave an $O(n^3)$-time algorithm for the problem of finding a maximum-cardinality convex subset of an arbitrary given set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane. This paper examines a generalization of the problem, the Bottleneck Convex Subsets problem: given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane and a positive integer $k$, select $k$ pairwise disjoint convex subsets of $P$ such that the cardinality of the smallest subset is maximized. Equivalently, a solution maximizes the cardinality of $k$ mutually disjoint convex subsets of $P$ of equal cardinality. We show the problem is NP-hard when $k$ is an arbitrary input parameter, we give an algorithm that solves the problem exactly, with running time polynomial in $n$ when $k$ is fixed, and we give a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm parameterized in terms of the number of points strictly interior to the convex hull.

arXiv commentPreliminary results appeared at the 27th International Computing and Combinatorics Conference (COCOON 2021)