1. Distributed transformations of Hamiltonian shapes based on line moves
- Author
-
Igor Potapov, Othon Michail, and Abdullah Almethen
- Subjects
Physics ,Square tiling ,FOS: Computer and information sciences ,General Computer Science ,Neighbourhood (graph theory) ,Hamiltonian path ,Theoretical Computer Science ,Computer Science::Multiagent Systems ,Combinatorics ,Discrete system ,Computer Science - Robotics ,symbols.namesake ,Computer Science - Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing ,Simple (abstract algebra) ,Distributed algorithm ,Computer Science - Data Structures and Algorithms ,Line (geometry) ,symbols ,Data Structures and Algorithms (cs.DS) ,Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing (cs.DC) ,Robotics (cs.RO) ,Hamiltonian (control theory) - Abstract
We consider a discrete system of $n$ simple indistinguishable devices, called \emph{agents}, forming a \emph{connected} shape $S_I$ on a two-dimensional square grid. Agents are equipped with a linear-strength mechanism, called a \emph{line move}, by which an agent can push a whole line of consecutive agents in one of the four directions in a single time-step. We study the problem of transforming an initial shape $S_I$ into a given target shape $S_F$ via a finite sequence of line moves in a distributed model, where each agent can observe the states of nearby agents in a Moore neighbourhood. Our main contribution is the first distributed connectivity-preserving transformation that exploits line moves within a total of $O(n \log_2 n)$ moves, which is asymptotically equivalent to that of the best-known centralised transformations. The algorithm solves the \emph{line formation problem} that allows agents to form a final straight line $S_L$, starting from any shape $ S_I $, whose \emph{associated graph} contains a Hamiltonian path., Comment: 31 pages, 18 figures
- Published
- 2023