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Heuristics on the Data-Collecting Robot Problem with Immediate Rewards

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PRIMA 2016: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems (PRIMA 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9862))

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Abstract

We propose the Data-collecting Robot Problem, where robots collect data as they visit nodes in a graph, and algorithms to solve it. There are two variations of the problem: the delayed-reward problem, in which robots must travel back to the base station to deliver the data collected and to receive rewards; and the immediate-reward problem, in which the reward is immediately given to the robots as they visit each node. The delayed-reward problem is discussed in one of the authors’ work. This paper focuses on the immediate-reward problem. The solution structure has a clustering step and a tour-building step. We propose Progressive Gain-aware Clustering that finds good quality solutions with efficient time complexity. Among the six proposed tour-building heuristics, Greedy Insertion and Total-Loss algorithms perform best when data rewards are different.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The reward function in our problem does not satisfy the Diminishing Marginal Gain property, so the performance guarantee of SGA doesn’t hold.

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Acknowledgement

We thank Mahmuda Rahman and Jeff Hudack for reviewing drafts of this paper and providing valuable suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Syracuse University, Syracuse, USA

    Zhi Xing & Jae C. Oh

Authors
  1. Zhi Xing
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  2. Jae C. Oh
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhi Xing .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica, UniversitĂ  degli Studi di Torino , Torino, Italy

    Matteo Baldoni

  2. Computing and Communications, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom

    Amit K. Chopra

  3. Department of Computer Science, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA

    Tran Cao Son

  4. Graduate School of Maritime Sciences, Kobe University, Kobe, Japan

    Katsutoshi Hirayama

  5. Dept. di Informatica: Sci. e Ingegneria, Universitá di Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Paolo Torroni

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Xing, Z., Oh, J.C. (2016). Heuristics on the Data-Collecting Robot Problem with Immediate Rewards. In: Baldoni, M., Chopra, A., Son, T., Hirayama, K., Torroni, P. (eds) PRIMA 2016: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems. PRIMA 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9862. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44832-9_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44832-9_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-44831-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-44832-9

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