Computational Geometry with Probabilistically Noisy Primitive Operations

Abstract

Much prior work has been done on designing computational geometry algorithms that handle input degeneracies, data imprecision, and arithmetic round-off errors. We take a new approach, inspired by the noisy sorting literature, and study computational geometry algorithms subject to noisy Boolean primitive operations in which, e.g., the comparison "is point q above line L?" returns the wrong answer with some fixed probability. We propose a novel technique called path-guided pushdown random walks that generalizes the results of noisy sorting. We apply this technique to solve point-location, plane-sweep, convex hulls in 2D and 3D, dynamic 2D convex hulls, and Delaunay triangulations for noisy primitives in optimal time with high probability.