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International Workshop on Algorithms and Computation

WALCOM 2017: WALCOM: Algorithms and Computation pp 279–291Cite as

Gathering Asynchronous Robots in the Presence of Obstacles

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 10167))

Abstract

This work addresses the problem of Gathering a swarm of point robots when the plane of deployment has non-intersecting transparent convex polygonal obstacles. While multiplicity detection is enough for gathering three or more asynchronous robots without obstacles, it is shown that in the presence of obstacles, gathering may not be possible even in the FSYNC model with all of multiplicity detection, memory, chirality and direction-only axis agreement. Initial configurations for which gathering is impossible are characterized. For other configurations, a distributed algorithm for the gathering problem is proposed without any extra assumption on the capabilities of the robots. The algorithm works even if the configuration contains points of multiplicities.

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Acknowledgement

The authors would like to express their gratitude to Peter Widmayer and Matus Mihalak for their valuable inputs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ACM Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India

    Subhash Bhagat & Krishnendu Mukhopadhyaya

Authors
  1. Subhash Bhagat
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  2. Krishnendu Mukhopadhyaya
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Subhash Bhagat .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universiti Teknologi Brunei, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam

    Sheung-Hung Poon

  2. Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh

    Md. Saidur Rahman

  3. National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Hsu-Chun Yen

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Bhagat, S., Mukhopadhyaya, K. (2017). Gathering Asynchronous Robots in the Presence of Obstacles. In: Poon, SH., Rahman, M., Yen, HC. (eds) WALCOM: Algorithms and Computation. WALCOM 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10167. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53925-6_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53925-6_22

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-53924-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-53925-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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