Position discovery for a system of bouncing robots

Czyzowicz, Jurek, Gasieniec, Leszek ORCID: 0000-0003-1809-9814, Kosowski, Adrian, Kranakis, Evangelos, Morales-Ponce, Oscar and Pacheco, Eduardo (2015) Position discovery for a system of bouncing robots. INFORMATION AND COMPUTATION, 244. pp. 122-133.

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Abstract

A collection of n anonymous mobile robots is deployed on a unit-perimeter ring or a unit-length line segment. Every robot starts moving at constant speed, and bounces each time it meets any other robot or segment endpoint, changing its walk direction. We study the problem of position discovery, in which the task of each robot is to detect the presence and the initial positions of all other robots. The robots cannot communicate or perceive information about the environment in any way other than by bouncing nor they have control over their walks which are determined by their initial positions and their starting directions. Each robot has a clock allowing it to observe the times of its bounces. We give complete characterizations of all initial configurations for both the ring and the segment in which no position detection algorithm exists and we design optimal position detection algorithms for all feasible configurations.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Position, Detection, Mobile, Robots, Distributed, Computing, Algorithms, Complexity
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	01 Feb 2017 11:30
Last Modified:	19 Jan 2023 07:19
DOI:	10.1016/j.ic.2015.07.005
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3005499