# Distributed Transformations of Hamiltonian Shapes based on Line Moves

Almethen, Abdullah, Michail, Othon ORCID: 0000-0002-6234-3960 and Potapov, Igor
Distributed Transformations of Hamiltonian Shapes based on Line Moves.

## Abstract

We consider a discrete system of $n$ simple indistinguishable devices, called \emph{agents}, forming a \emph{connected} shape $S_I$ on a two-dimensional square grid. Agents are equipped with a linear-strength mechanism, called a \emph{line move}, by which an agent can push a whole line of consecutive agents in one of the four directions in a single time-step. We study the problem of transforming an initial shape $S_I$ into a given target shape $S_F$ via a finite sequence of line moves in a distributed model, where each agent can observe the states of nearby agents in a Moore neighbourhood. Our main contribution is the first distributed connectivity-preserving transformation that exploits line moves within a total of $O(n \log_2 n)$ moves, which is asymptotically equivalent to that of the best-known centralised transformations. The algorithm solves the \emph{line formation problem} that allows agents to form a final straight line $S_L$, starting from any shape $S_I$, whose \emph{associated graph} contains a Hamiltonian path.

Item Type: Article 31 pages, 18 figures cs.DS, cs.DS, cs.DC, cs.RO Faculty of Science and Engineering > School of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science Symplectic Admin 02 Sep 2021 08:15 09 Nov 2021 14:42 Author https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3135610