Simply Realising an Imprecise Polyline is NP-hard

Abstract

We consider the problem of deciding, given a sequence of regions, if there is a choice of points, one for each region, such that the induced polyline is simple or weakly simple, meaning that it can touch but not cross itself. Specifically, we consider the case where each region is a translate of the same shape. We show that the problem is NP-hard when the shape is a unit-disk or unit-square. We argue that the problem is is NP-complete when the shape is a vertical unit-segment.