Shortest Path through Random Points

Sung Jin Hwang, Steven B. Damelin, Alfred O. Hero III

Published 2012-01-31, updated 2015-03-10Version 4

Let $(M,g_1)$ be a complete $d$-dimensional Riemannian manifold for $d > 1$. Let $\mathcal X_n$ be a set of $n$ sample points in $M$ drawn randomly from a smooth Lebesgue density $f$ supported in $M$. Let $x,y$ be two points in $M$. We prove that the normalized length of the power-weighted shortest path between $x, y$ through $\mathcal X_n$ converges almost surely to a constant multiple of the Riemannian distance between $x,y$ under the metric tensor $g_p = f^{2(1-p)/d} g_1$, where $p > 1$ is the power parameter.