Linear time Minimum Area All-flush Triangles Circumscribing a Convex Polygon

Abstract

We study the problem of computing the minimum area triangle that circumscribes a given $n$-sided convex polygon touching edge-to-edge. In other words, we compute the minimum area triangle that is the intersection of 3 half-planes out of $n$ half-planes defined by a given convex polygon. Building on the Rotate-and-Kill technique {Arxiv:1707.04071}, we propose an algorithm that solves the problem in $O(n)$ time, improving the best-known $O(n\log n)$ time algorithms given in [A. Aggarwal et. al. DCG94; B. Schieber. SODA95}. Our algorithm computes all the locally minimal area circumscribing triangles touching edge-to-edge.