Speaker:   Olga Gerber
  Institut fur Informatik und praktische Mathematik
  University of Kiel, Germany


Title: On Packing Squares with Resource Augmentation: Maximizing the Profit

We consider the problem of packing squares with profits into a bounded square region so as to maximize their total profit. More specifically, given a set L of n squares with positive profits, it is required to pack a subset of them into a unit size square region [0,1] x [0,1] so that the total profit of the squares packed is maximized. For any given positive accuracy ε>0, we present an algorithm that outputs a packing of a subset of L in the augmented square region [1+ε] x [1+ε] with profit value at least (1-ε)OPT(L), where OPT(L) is the maximum profit that can be achieved by packing a subset of L in the unit square. The running time of the algorithm is polynomial in n for fixed ε.
Joint work with Aleksei V. Fishkin, Klaus Jansen, and Roberto Solis-Oba.