Partial Searchlight Scheduling is Strongly PSPACE-complete

The problem of searching a polygonal region for an unpredictably moving intruder by a set of stationary guards, each carrying an orientable laser, is known as the Searchlight Scheduling Problem. Determining the complexity of deciding if the entire area can be searched is a long-standing open problem. Recently, the author introduced the Partial Searchlight Scheduling Problem, in which only a given subregion of the environment has to be searched, and proved that its 3-dimensional decision version is PSPACEhard, even when restricted to orthogonal polyhedra. Here we extend and refine this result, by proving that 2-dimensional Partial Searchlight Scheduling is strongly PSPACE-complete, both in general and restricted to orthogonal polygons in which the region to be searched is a rectangle.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2012
• Where: CORR
• Authors: Giovanni Viglietta
• Keywords: CORR 2012, Decision Version, Education, Polygonal Region, Stationary Guards