A single-exponential upper bound for finding shortest paths in three dimensions

  • Authors:
  • John H. Reif;James A. Storer

  • Affiliations:
  • Duke Univ., Durham, NC;Brandeis Univ., Waltham, MA

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the ACM (JACM)
  • Year:
  • 1994

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Abstract

We derive a single-exponential time upper bound for finding the shortest path between two points in 3-dimensional Euclidean space with (nonnecessarily convex) polyhedral obstacles. Prior to this work, the best known algorithm required double-exponential time. Given that the problem is known to be PSPACE-hard, the bound we present is essentially the best (in the worst-case sense) that can reasonably be expected.