Robot Searching and Gathering on Rings under Minimal Assumptions

Description

Consider a set of mobile robots with minimal capabilities placed over distinct nodes of a discrete anonymous ring. They operate on the basis of the so called \emph{Look}-\emph{Compute}-\emph{Move} cycle. Asynchronously, each robot takes a snapshot of the ring, determining which nodes are either occupied by robots or empty. Based on the observed configuration, it decides whether to move to one of its adjacent nodes or to stay idle. In the first case, it performs the computed move, eventually. The computation also depends on the required task. In this paper, we solve both the well-known \emph{Searching} and \emph{Gathering} tasks. In the literature, most contributions are restricted to a subset of initial configurations. Here, we design two different algorithms and provide a full characterization of the initial configurations that permit the resolution of the problems under minimal assumptions.

Abstract (French)

Nous considérons un ensemble de robots mobiles qui sont placés sur distincts sommets d'un réseau en anneau. Le réseau est anonyme et les robots ont des aptitudes minimales. Ils opérent par des cycles \emph{Observer}-\emph{Calculer}-\emph{Bouger}. Nous résolvons les problémes de la réunion et du nettoyage de graphe dans ce modéle.

Additional details