583 research outputs found
Meeting in a Polygon by Anonymous Oblivious Robots
The Meeting problem for searchers in a polygon (possibly with
holes) consists in making the searchers move within , according to a
distributed algorithm, in such a way that at least two of them eventually come
to see each other, regardless of their initial positions. The polygon is
initially unknown to the searchers, and its edges obstruct both movement and
vision. Depending on the shape of , we minimize the number of searchers
for which the Meeting problem is solvable. Specifically, if has a
rotational symmetry of order (where corresponds to no
rotational symmetry), we prove that searchers are sufficient, and
the bound is tight. Furthermore, we give an improved algorithm that optimally
solves the Meeting problem with searchers in all polygons whose
barycenter is not in a hole (which includes the polygons with no holes). Our
algorithms can be implemented in a variety of standard models of mobile robots
operating in Look-Compute-Move cycles. For instance, if the searchers have
memory but are anonymous, asynchronous, and have no agreement on a coordinate
system or a notion of clockwise direction, then our algorithms work even if the
initial memory contents of the searchers are arbitrary and possibly misleading.
Moreover, oblivious searchers can execute our algorithms as well, encoding
information by carefully positioning themselves within the polygon. This code
is computable with basic arithmetic operations, and each searcher can
geometrically construct its own destination point at each cycle using only a
compass. We stress that such memoryless searchers may be located anywhere in
the polygon when the execution begins, and hence the information they initially
encode is arbitrary. Our algorithms use a self-stabilizing map construction
subroutine which is of independent interest.Comment: 37 pages, 9 figure
Impossibility of Gathering, a Certification
Recent advances in Distributed Computing highlight models and algorithms for
autonomous swarms of mobile robots that self-organise and cooperate to solve
global objectives. The overwhelming majority of works so far considers handmade
algorithms and proofs of correctness. This paper builds upon a previously
proposed formal framework to certify the correctness of impossibility results
regarding distributed algorithms that are dedicated to autonomous mobile robots
evolving in a continuous space. As a case study, we consider the problem of
gathering all robots at a particular location, not known beforehand. A
fundamental (but not yet formally certified) result, due to Suzuki and
Yamashita, states that this simple task is impossible for two robots executing
deterministic code and initially located at distinct positions. Not only do we
obtain a certified proof of the original impossibility result, we also get the
more general impossibility of gathering with an even number of robots, when any
two robots are possibly initially at the same exact location.Comment: 10
Certified Impossibility Results for Byzantine-Tolerant Mobile Robots
We propose a framework to build formal developments for robot networks using
the COQ proof assistant, to state and to prove formally various properties. We
focus in this paper on impossibility proofs, as it is natural to take advantage
of the COQ higher order calculus to reason about algorithms as abstract
objects. We present in particular formal proofs of two impossibility results
forconvergence of oblivious mobile robots if respectively more than one half
and more than one third of the robots exhibit Byzantine failures, starting from
the original theorems by Bouzid et al.. Thanks to our formalization, the
corresponding COQ developments are quite compact. To our knowledge, these are
the first certified (in the sense of formally proved) impossibility results for
robot networks
Certified Universal Gathering in for Oblivious Mobile Robots
We present a unified formal framework for expressing mobile robots models,
protocols, and proofs, and devise a protocol design/proof methodology dedicated
to mobile robots that takes advantage of this formal framework. As a case
study, we present the first formally certified protocol for oblivious mobile
robots evolving in a two-dimensional Euclidean space. In more details, we
provide a new algorithm for the problem of universal gathering mobile oblivious
robots (that is, starting from any initial configuration that is not bivalent,
using any number of robots, the robots reach in a finite number of steps the
same position, not known beforehand) without relying on a common orientation
nor chirality. We give very strong guaranties on the correctness of our
algorithm by proving formally that it is correct, using the COQ proof
assistant. This result demonstrates both the effectiveness of the approach to
obtain new algorithms that use as few assumptions as necessary, and its
manageability since the amount of developed code remains human readable.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1506.0160
Positional Encoding by Robots with Non-Rigid Movements
Consider a set of autonomous computational entities, called \emph{robots},
operating inside a polygonal enclosure (possibly with holes), that have to
perform some collaborative tasks. The boundary of the polygon obstructs both
visibility and mobility of a robot. Since the polygon is initially unknown to
the robots, the natural approach is to first explore and construct a map of the
polygon. For this, the robots need an unlimited amount of persistent memory to
store the snapshots taken from different points inside the polygon. However, it
has been shown by Di Luna et al. [DISC 2017] that map construction can be done
even by oblivious robots by employing a positional encoding strategy where a
robot carefully positions itself inside the polygon to encode information in
the binary representation of its distance from the closest polygon vertex. Of
course, to execute this strategy, it is crucial for the robots to make accurate
movements. In this paper, we address the question whether this technique can be
implemented even when the movements of the robots are unpredictable in the
sense that the robot can be stopped by the adversary during its movement before
reaching its destination. However, there exists a constant ,
unknown to the robot, such that the robot can always reach its destination if
it has to move by no more than amount. This model is known in
literature as \emph{non-rigid} movement. We give a partial answer to the
question in the affirmative by presenting a map construction algorithm for
robots with non-rigid movement, but having bits of persistent memory and
ability to make circular moves
RoboCast: Asynchronous Communication in Robot Networks
This paper introduces the \emph{RoboCast} communication abstraction. The
RoboCast allows a swarm of non oblivious, anonymous robots that are only
endowed with visibility sensors and do not share a common coordinate system, to
asynchronously exchange information. We propose a generic framework that covers
a large class of asynchronous communication algorithms and show how our
framework can be used to implement fundamental building blocks in robot
networks such as gathering or stigmergy. In more details, we propose a RoboCast
algorithm that allows robots to broadcast their local coordinate systems to
each others. Our algorithm is further refined with a local collision avoidance
scheme. Then, using the RoboCast primitive, we propose algorithms for
deterministic asynchronous gathering and binary information exchange
Deterministic Symmetry Breaking in Ring Networks
We study a distributed coordination mechanism for uniform agents located on a
circle. The agents perform their actions in synchronised rounds. At the
beginning of each round an agent chooses the direction of its movement from
clockwise, anticlockwise, or idle, and moves at unit speed during this round.
Agents are not allowed to overpass, i.e., when an agent collides with another
it instantly starts moving with the same speed in the opposite direction
(without exchanging any information with the other agent). However, at the end
of each round each agent has access to limited information regarding its
trajectory of movement during this round.
We assume that mobile agents are initially located on a circle unit
circumference at arbitrary but distinct positions unknown to other agents. The
agents are equipped with unique identifiers from a fixed range. The {\em
location discovery} task to be performed by each agent is to determine the
initial position of every other agent.
Our main result states that, if the only available information about movement
in a round is limited to %information about distance between the initial and
the final position, then there is a superlinear lower bound on time needed to
solve the location discovery problem. Interestingly, this result corresponds to
a combinatorial symmetry breaking problem, which might be of independent
interest. If, on the other hand, an agent has access to the distance to its
first collision with another agent in a round, we design an asymptotically
efficient and close to optimal solution for the location discovery problem.Comment: Conference version accepted to ICDCS 201
Non-uniform circle formation algorithm for oblivious mobile robots with convergence toward uniformity
AbstractThis paper presents a distributed algorithm whereby a group of mobile robots self-organize and position themselves into forming a circle in a loosely synchronized environment. In spite of its apparent simplicity, the difficulty of the problem comes from the weak assumptions made on the system. In particular, robots are anonymous, oblivious (i.e., stateless), unable to communicate directly, and disoriented in the sense that they share no knowledge of a common coordinate system. Furthermore, robotsâ activations are not synchronized. More specifically, the proposed algorithm ensures that robots deterministically form a non-uniform circle in a finite number of steps and converges to a situation in which all robots are located evenly on the boundary of the circle
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