Open Guard Edges and Edge Guards in Simple Polygons

An open edge of a simple polygon is the set of points in the relative interior of an edge. We revisit several art gallery problems, previously considered for closed edge guards, using open edge guards. A guard edge of a polygon is an edge that sees every point inside the polygon. We show that every simple non-starshaped polygon admits at most one open guard edge, and give a simple new proof that it admits at most three closed guard edges. We also characterize open guard edges using a special type of kernel. Finally, we present lower bound constructions for simple polygons with n vertices that require \(\lfloor n/3 \rfloor\) open edge guards, and conjecture that this bound is tight.