Flat Foldings of Plane Graphs with Prescribed Angles and Edge Lengths

When can a plane graph with prescribed edge lengths and prescribed angles (from among {0,180°, 360°}) be folded flat to lie in an infinitesimally thick line, without crossings? This problem generalizes the classic theory of single-vertex flat origami with prescribed mountain-valley assignment, which...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Demaine, Erik D., Demaine, Martin L., Eppstein, David, Lubiw, Anna, Uehara, Ryuhei, Abel, Zachary Ryan
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Springer-Verlag 2015
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/100000
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3803-5703
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4295-1117
Description
Summary:When can a plane graph with prescribed edge lengths and prescribed angles (from among {0,180°, 360°}) be folded flat to lie in an infinitesimally thick line, without crossings? This problem generalizes the classic theory of single-vertex flat origami with prescribed mountain-valley assignment, which corresponds to the case of a cycle graph. We characterize such flat-foldable plane graphs by two obviously necessary but also sufficient conditions, proving a conjecture made in 2001: the angles at each vertex should sum to 360°, and every face of the graph must itself be flat foldable. This characterization leads to a linear-time algorithm for testing flat foldability of plane graphs with prescribed edge lengths and angles, and a polynomial-time algorithm for counting the number of distinct folded states.