On guillotine separability of squares and rectangles

Khan, A and Pittu, MR (2020) On guillotine separability of squares and rectangles. In: Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, LIPIcs, 17-19 August 2020, Virtual, Online.

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Abstract

Guillotine separability of rectangles has recently gained prominence in combinatorial optimization, computational geometry, and combinatorics. Consider a given large stock unit (say glass or wood) and we need to cut out a set of required rectangles from it. Many cutting technologies allow only end-to-end cuts called guillotine cuts. Guillotine cuts occur in stages. Each stage consists of either only vertical cuts or only horizontal cuts. In k-stage packing, the number of cuts to obtain each rectangle from the initial packing is at most k (plus an additional trimming step to separate the rectangle itself from a waste area). Pach and Tardos 20 studied the following question: Given a set of n axis-parallel rectangles (in the weighted case, each rectangle has an associated weight), cut out as many rectangles (resp. weight) as possible using a sequence of guillotine cuts. They provide a guillotine cutting sequence that recovers 1/(2 log n)-fraction of rectangles (resp. weights). Abed et al. 1 claimed that a guillotine cutting sequence can recover a constant fraction for axis-parallel squares. They also conjectured that for any set of rectangles, there exists a sequence of axis-parallel guillotine cuts that recovers a constant fraction of rectangles. This conjecture, if true, would yield a combinatorial O(1)-approximation for Maximum Independent Set of Rectangles (MISR), a long-standing open problem. We show the conjecture is not true, if we only allow o(log log n) stages (resp. o(log n/ log log n)-stages for the weighted case). On the positive side, we show a simple O(n log n)-time 2-stage cut sequence that recovers 1/(1 + log n)-fraction of rectangles. We improve the extraction of squares by showing that 1/40-fraction (resp. 1/160 in the weighted case) of squares can be recovered using guillotine cuts. We also show O(1)-fraction of rectangles, even in the weighted case, can be recovered for many special cases of rectangles, e.g. fat (bounded width/height), δ-large (large in one of the dimensions), etc. We show that this implies O(1)-factor approximation for Maximum Weighted Independent Set of Rectangles, the weighted version of MISR, for these classes of rectangles. © 2020 Schloss Dagstuhl- Leibniz-Zentrum fur Informatik GmbH, Dagstuhl Publishing. All rights reserved.

Item Type:	Conference Paper
Publication:	Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, LIPIcs
Publisher:	Schloss Dagstuhl- Leibniz-Zentrum fur Informatik GmbH, Dagstuhl Publishing
Additional Information:	cited By 0; Conference of 23rd International Conference on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems and 24th International Conference on Randomization and Computation, APPROX/RANDOM 2020 ; Conference Date: 17 August 2020 Through 19 August 2020; Conference Code:162295
Keywords:	Approximation algorithms; Combinatorial optimization; Computational geometry; Random processes; Recovery, Axis parallel rectangles; Combinatorics; Cutting technology; Guillotine cuts; Guillotine cutting; Maximum independent sets; Maximum weighted independent set; Positive sides, Combinatorial mathematics
Department/Centre:	Division of Electrical Sciences > Computer Science & Automation
Date Deposited:	04 Dec 2020 09:26
Last Modified:	04 Dec 2020 09:26
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/66760

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