New results for the minimum weight triangulation problem

Abstract

Given a finite set of points in a plane, a triangulation is a maximal set of nonintersecting line segments connecting the points. The weight of a triangulation is the sum of the Euclidean lengths of its line segments. No polynomial-time algorithm is known to find a triangulation of minimum weight, nor is the minimum weight triangulation problem known to be NP-hard. This paper proposes a new heuristic algorithm that triangulates a set of n points in O(n3) time and that never produces a triangulation whose weight is greater than that of a greedy triangulation. The algorithm produces an optimal triangulation if the points are the vertices of a convex polygon. Experimental results indicate that this algorithm rarely produces a nonoptimal triangulation and performs much better than a seemingly similar heuristic of Lingas. In the direction of showing the minimum weight triangulation problem is NP-hard, two generalizations that are quite close to the minimum weight triangulation problem are shown to be NP-hard. © 1994 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.