Existence and hardness of conveyor belts
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An open problem of Manuel Abellanas asks whether every set of disjoint closed unit disks in the plane can be connected by a conveyor belt, which means a tight simple closed curve that touches the boundary of each disk, possibly multiple times. We prove three main results. First, for unit disks whose centers are both x-monotone and y-monotone, or whose centers have x-coordinates that differ by at least two units, a conveyor belt always exists and can be found efficiently. Second, it is NP-complete to determine whether disks of varying radii have a conveyor belt, and it remains NP-complete when we constrain the belt to touch disks exactly once. Third, any disjoint set of n disks of arbitrary radii can be augmented by O(n) "guide" disks so that the augmented system has a conveyor belt touching each disk exactly once, answering a conjecture of Demaine, Demaine, and Palop.
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