Given a plane graph with fixed edge lengths, and an assignment of the angles 0, 180, and 360 to the angles between adjacent edges, we show how to test whether the angle assignment can be realized by an embedding of the graph as a flat folding on a line. As a consequence, we can determine whether two-dimensional cell complexes with one vertex can be flattened. The main idea behind the result is to show that each face of the graph can be folded independently of the other faces.
If a folding pattern for a flat origami is given, together with a mountain-valley assignment, there might still be multiple ways of folding it, depending on how some flaps of the pattern are arranged within pockets formed by folds elsewhere in the pattern. It turns out to be hard (but fixed-parameter tractable) to determine which of these ways is best with respect to minimizing the thickness of the folded pattern.
We study the problem of splitting the vertices of a given graph into a bounded number of sub-vertices (with each edge attaching to one of the sub-vertices) in order to make the resulting graph planar. It is NP-complete, but can be approximated to within a constant factor, and is fixed-parameter tractable in the treewidth.
(Slides)
A motion that slides an undirected path along its length from one configuration to another in a graph (allowing moves in both directions) can be found in time that is fixed-parameter tractable in the path length. However the problem is PSPACE-complete for paths of unbounded length, even when the host graph has bounded bandwidth.
(Slides)
We study problems in which we are given an origami crease pattern and seek to reconfigure one locally flat foldable mountain-valley assignment into another by a sequence of operations that change the assignment around a single face of the crease pattern.
Co-authors – Publications – David Eppstein – Theory Group – Inf. & Comp. Sci. – UC Irvine
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