In rendezvous, two agents traverse network edges in synchronous rounds and have to meet at some node. In treasure hunt, a single agent has to find a stationary target situated at an unknown node of the network. We study tradeoffs between the amount of information ( @math ) available @math to the agents and the cost (number of edge traversals) of rendezvous and treasure hunt. Our goal is to find the smallest size of advice which enables the agents to solve these tasks at some cost @math in a network with @math edges. This size turns out to depend on the initial distance @math and on the ratio @math , which is the @math due to advice. For arbitrary graphs, we give upper and lower bounds of @math and @math , respectively, on the optimal size of advice. For the class of trees, we give nearly tight upper and lower bounds of @math and @math , respectively.
Treasure hunt, network exploration and rendezvous in networks are interrelated problems that have received much attention in recent literature. Treasure hunt has been investigated in the line @cite_36 @cite_12 , in the plane @cite_50 and in other terrains @cite_30 . Treasure hunt in anonymous networks (without any information about the network) has been studied in @cite_48 @cite_31 with the goal of minimizing cost.
@cite_30 @cite_36 @cite_48 @cite_50 @cite_31 @cite_12
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In rendezvous, two agents traverse network edges in synchronous rounds and have to meet at some node. In treasure hunt, a single agent has to find a stationary target situated at an unknown node of the network. We study tradeoffs between the amount of information (advice) available a priori to the agents and the cost (number of edge traversals) of rendezvous and treasure hunt. Our goal is to find the smallest size of advice which enables the agents to solve these tasks at some cost C in a network with e edges. This size turns out to depend on the initial distance D and on the ratio e C , which is the relative cost gain due to advice. For arbitrary graphs, we give upper and lower bounds of O ( D log ( D ? e C ) + log log e ) and ? ( D log e C ) , respectively, on the optimal size of advice. For the class of trees, we give nearly tight upper and lower bounds of O ( D log e C + log log e ) and ? ( D log e C ) , respectively. In rendezvous, two agents traverse edges in rounds and have to meet at some node.In treasure hunt, an agent must find a fixed target at some node of the network.Objective: tradeoffs between the advice available to the agents and the cost.Results: bounds on the size of advice to achieve a given cost. We obtain several improved solutions for the deterministic rendezvous problem in general undirected graphs. Our solutions answer several problems left open in a recent paper by We also introduce an interesting variant of the rendezvous problem which we call the deterministic treasure hunt problem. Both the rendezvous and the treasure hunt problems motivate the study of universal traversal sequences and universal exploration sequences with some strengthened properties. We call such sequences strongly universal traversal (exploration) sequences. We give an explicit construction of strongly universal exploration sequences. The existence of strongly universal traversal sequences, as well as the solution of the most difficult variant of the deterministic treasure hunt problem, are left as intriguing open problems. In this paper, we investigate the explicit deterministic treasure hunt problem in a @math -vertex network. This problem was firstly introduced by Ta-Shma and Zwick in TZ07 [SODA'07]. Note also it is a variant of the well known rendezvous problem in which one of the robot (the treasure) is always stationary. In this paper, we propose an @math -time algorithm for the treasure hunt problem, which significantly improves the currently best known result of running time @math in TZ07 , where @math is a constant induced from the construction of an universal exploration sequence in R05,TZ07 , and @math is an arbitrary large, but fixed, integer constant. The treasure hunt problem also motivates the study of strongly universal exploration sequences. In this paper, we also propose a much better explicit construction for strongly universal exploration sequences compared to the one in TZ07 . The author considers the problem faced by two people who are placed randomly in a known search region and move about at unit speed to find each other in the least expected time. This time is called the rendezvous value of the region. It is shown how symmetries in the search region may hinder the process by preventing coordination based on concepts such as north or clockwise. A general formulation of the rendezvous search problem is given for a compact metric space endowed with a group of isometrics which represents the spatial uncertainties of the players. These concepts are illustrated by considering upper bounds for various rendezvous values for the circle and an arbitrary metric network. The discrete rendezvous problem on a cycle graph for players restricted to symmetric Markovian strategies is then solved. Finally, the author considers the problem faced by two people on an infinite line who each know the distribution of the distance but not the direction to each other.