Line Search for an Oblivious Moving Target

Jared Coleman, Evangelos Kranakis, Danny Krizanc, Oscar Morales-Ponce

Research output: Working paperPreprint

Abstract

Consider search on an infinite line involving an autonomous robot starting at the origin of the line and an oblivious moving target at initial distance $d \geq 1$ from it. The robot can change direction and move anywhere on the line with constant maximum speed $1$ while the target is also moving on the line with constant speed $v>0$ but is unable to change its speed or direction. The goal is for the robot to catch up to the target in as little time as possible. The classic case where $v=0$ and the target's initial distance $d$ is unknown to the robot is the well-studied ``cow-path problem''. Alpert and Gal gave an optimal algorithm for the case where a target with unknown initial distance $d$ is moving away from the robot with a known speed $v
Original languageEnglish
StatePublished - Nov 7 2022

Keywords

  • cs.DC
  • cs.DM

Cite this