Abstract

Abstract: It is well known that many graph problems, like the Traveling Salesman Problem, are easier to solve in a Euclidean space. This motivates the idea of quickly preprocessing a given graph by embedding it in a Euclidean space to solve graph problems efficiently. In this paper, we study a near-linear time algorithm, called FastMap, that embeds a given non-negative edge-weighted undirected graph in a Euclidean space and approximately preserves the pairwise shortest path distances between vertices. The Euclidean space can then be used either for heuristic guidance of A* (as suggested previously) or for geometric interpretations that facilitate the application of techniques from analytical geometry. We present a new variant of FastMap and compare it with the original variant theoretically and empirically. We demonstrate its usefulness for solving a path-finding and a multi-agent meeting problem.

Download the paper in pdf.

Many publishers do not want authors to make their papers available electronically after the papers have been published. Please use the electronic versions provided here only if hardcopies are not yet available. If you have comments on any of these papers, please send me an email! Also, please send me your papers if we have common interests.

This page was automatically created by a bibliography maintenance system that was developed as part of an undergraduate research project, advised by Sven Koenig.