A Neighborhood Search Technique for the Freeze Tag Problem

The Freeze Tag Problem arises naturally in the field of swarm robotics. Given n robots at different locations, the problem is to devise a schedule to activate all robots in the minimum amount of time. Activation of robots, other than the initial robot, only occurs if an active robot physically moves to the location of an inactive robot. Several authors have devised heuristic algorithms to build solutions to the Freeze Tag Problem. Here, we investigate an update procedure based on a hill-climbing, local search algorithm to solve the Freeze-Tag Problem. Subject Classifications: Metaheuristics, degree-bounded minimum diameter spanning trees, swarm robotics, neighborhood structure, improvement graph, combinatorial optimizatio