Applications of Parametric Searching in Geometric Optimization

We present several applications in computational geometry of Megiddo's parametric searching technique. These applications include: (1) Finding the minimum Hausdorff distance in the Euclidean metric between two polygonal regions under translation; (2) Computing the biggest line segment that can be placed inside a simple polygon; (3) Computing the smallest width annulus that contains a given set of given points in the plane; (4) Given a set of n points in 3-space, finding the largest radius r such that if we place a ball of radius r around each point, no segment connecting a pair of points is intersected by a third ball. Besides obtaining efficient solutions to all these problems (which, in every case, either improve considerably previous solutions or are the first non-trivial solutions to these problems), our goal is to demonstrate the versatility of the parametric searching technique