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Gridworlds have been long-utilised in AI research, particularly in reinforcement learning, as they provide simple yet scalable models for many real-world applications such as robot navigation, emergent behaviour, and operations research. We initiate a study of gridworlds using the mathematical framework of reconfigurable systems and state complexes due to Abrams, Ghrist & Peterson. State complexes represent all possible configurations of a system as a single geometric space, thus making them conducive to study using geometric, topological, or combinatorial methods. The main contribution of this work is a modification to the original Abrams, Ghrist & Peterson setup which we introduce to capture agent braiding and thereby more naturally represent the topology of gridworlds. With this modification, the state complexes may exhibit geometric defects (failure of Gromov's Link Condition). Serendipitously, we discover these failures occur exactly where undesirable or dangerous states appear in the gridworld. Our results therefore provide a novel method for seeking guaranteed safety limitations in discrete task environments with single or multiple agents, and offer useful safety information (in geometric and topological forms) for incorporation in or analysis of machine learning systems. More broadly, our work introduces tools from geometric group theory and combinatorics to the AI community and demonstrates a proof-of-concept for this geometric viewpoint of the task domain through the example of simple gridworld environments., Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures, 4 appendices; some parts rewritten and rearranged to improve exposition, no changes to mathematical content

We prove that the saddle connection graph associated to any half-translation surface is 4-hyperbolic and uniformly quasi-isometric to the regular countably infinite-valent tree. Consequently, the saddle connection graph is not quasi-isometrically rigid. We also characterise its Gromov boundary as the set of straight foliations with no saddle connections. In our arguments, we give a generalisation of the unicorn paths in the arc graph which may be of independent interest., Comment: 28 pages, 9 figures; v2: corrected statement of Corollary 1.3 (not affecting any other part of the paper)

The affine diffeomorphism group $\mathrm{Aff}(S,q)$ of a half-translation surface $(S,q)$ comprise the self-diffeomorphisms with constant differential away from the singularities. This group coincides with the stabiliser of the associated Teichm\"uller disc under the action of the mapping class group on Teichm\"uller space. We prove that any finitely generated subgroup of $\mathrm{Aff}(S,q)$ is undistorted in the mapping class group. We also show that the systole map restricted to the associated electrified Nielsen core in the Teichm\"uller disc is a quasi-isometric embedding into the curve complex., Comment: 24 pages

For a half-translation surface (S,q), the associated saddle connection complex A(S,q) is the simplicial complex where vertices are the saddle connections on (S,q), with simplices spanned by sets of pairwise disjoint saddle connections. This complex can be naturally regarded as an induced subcomplex of the arc complex. We prove that any simplicial isomorphism $\phi : A(S,q) \to A(S',q')$ between saddle connection complexes is induced by an affine diffeomorphism $F : (S,q) \to (S',q')$. In particular, this shows that the saddle connection complex is a complete invariant of affine equivalence classes of half-translation surfaces. Throughout our proof, we develop several combinatorial criteria of independent interest for detecting various geometric objects on a half-translation surface., Comment: 66 pages, 29 figures; v6: accepted for publication by the Journal of Topology

We introduce the polygonalisation complex of a surface, a cube complex whose vertices correspond to polygonalisations. This is a geometric model for the mapping class group and it is motivated by works of Harer, Mosher and Penner. Using properties of the flip graph, we show that the midcubes in the polygonalisation complex can be extended to a family of embedded and separating hyperplanes, parametrised by the arcs in the surface. We study the crossing graph of these hyperplanes and prove that it is quasi-isometric to the arc complex. We use the crossing graph to prove that, generically, different surfaces have different polygonalisation complexes. The polygonalisation complex is not CAT(0), but we can characterise the vertices where Gromov's link condition fails. This gives a tool for proving that, generically, the automorphism group of the polygonalisation complex is the (extended) mapping class group of the surface., Comment: 18 pages, 24 figures, 3 appendices

We study the SL(2,R)-infimal lengths of simple closed curves on half-translation surfaces. Our main result is a characterization of Veech surfaces in terms of these lengths. We also revisit the "no small virtual triangles" theorem of Smillie and Weiss and establish the following dichotomy: the virtual triangle area spectrum of a half-translation surface either has a gap above zero or is dense in a neighborhood of zero. These results make use of the auxiliary polygon associated to a curve on a half-translation surface, as introduced by Tang and Webb., Comment: 12 pages. v2: added proof of continuity of infimal length functions on quadratic differential space; 16 pages, one figure; to appear in Israel J. Math

We consider several natural sets of curves associated to a given Teichm\"uller disc, such as the systole set or cylinder set, and study their coarse geometry inside the curve graph. We prove that these sets are quasiconvex and agree up to uniformly bounded Hausdorff distance. Furthermore, we describe two operations on curves and show that they approximate nearest point projections to their respective targets. Our techniques can be used to prove a bounded geodesic image theorem for a natural map from the curve graph to the filling multi-arc graph associated to a Teichm\"uller disc., Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures; Added Section 3.3 which includes a bounded geodesic image theorem (Theorem 1.4); Distance bound is now log(2) for both parts of Proposition 7.1; Minor revisions in Section 7.2

Let $P : \Sigma \rightarrow S$ be a finite degree covering map between surfaces. Rafi and Schleimer show that there is an induced quasi-isometric embedding $\Pi : \mathcal{C}(S) \rightarrow \mathcal{C}(\Sigma)$ between the associated curve complexes. We define an operation on curves in $\mathcal{C}(\Sigma)$ using minimal intersection number conditions and prove that it approximates a nearest point projection to $\Pi(\mathcal{C}(S))$. We also approximate hulls of finite sets of vertices in the curve complex, together with their corresponding nearest point projections, using intersection numbers., Comment: 27 pages

Rafi and Schleimer recently proved that the natural relation between curve complexes induced by a covering map between two surfaces is a quasi-isometric embedding. We offer another proof of this result using a distance estimate via hyperbolic 3-manifolds., Comment: 5 pages