How many ants does it take to find the food?

Yuval Emek, Tobias Langner, David Stolz, Jara Uitto, Roger Wattenhofer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Consider the Ants Nearby Treasure Search (ANTS) problem, where n mobile agents, initially placed at the origin of an infinite grid, collaboratively search for an adversarially hidden treasure. The agents are controlled by deterministic/randomized finite or pushdown automata and are able to communicate with each other through constant-size messages. We show that the minimum number of agents required to solve the ANTS problem crucially depends on the computational capabilities of the agents as well as the timing parameters of the execution environment. We give lower and upper bounds for different scenarios.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)255-267
Number of pages13
JournalTheoretical Computer Science
Volume608
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Dec 2015

Keywords

  • Collaborative search
  • Finite automata
  • Treasure search

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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