Approximate Point-to-Face Shortest Paths in R^3

Abstract

We address the point-to-face approximate shortest path problem in R: Given a set of polyhedral obstacles with a total of n vertices, a source point s, an obstacle face f, and a real positive parameter epsilon, compute a path from s to f that avoids the interior of the obstacles and has length at most (1+epsilon) times the length of the shortest obstacle avoiding path from s to f. We present three approximation algorithms that take by extending three well-known "point-to-point" shortest path algorithms.