Reporting Bichromatic Segment Intersections from Point Sets

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a natural variation of the problem of computing all bichromatic intersections between two sets of segments. Given two sets R and B of n points in the plane defining two sets of segments, say red and blue, we present an O(n2) time and space algorithm for solving the problem of reporting the set of segments of each color intersected by segments of the other color. We also prove that this problem is 3-Sum hard and provide some illustrative examples of several point configurations.