Minimum area convex packing of two convex polygons

Given two convex polygons P and Q in the plane that are free to translate and rotate, a convex packing of them is the convex hull of a placement of P and a placement of Q whose interiors do not intersect. A minimum area convex packing of P and Q is one whose area is minimized. The problem of designing a deterministic algorithm for finding a minimum area convex packing of two convex polygons has remained open. We address this problem by first studying the contact configurations between P and Q and their algebraic structures. Crucial geometric and algebraic properties on the area function are then derived and analyzed which enable us to successfully discretize the search space. This discretization, together with a delicate algorithmic design and careful complexity analysis, allows us to develop an efficient O((n + m)nm) time deterministic algorithm for finding a true minimum area convex packing of P and Q, where n and m are the numbers of vertices of P and Q, respectively.