Distributed Anonymous Mobile Robots: Formation of Geometric Patterns
SIAM Journal on Computing
Selected writings on computing: a personal perspective
Selected writings on computing: a personal perspective
Circle formation for oblivious anonymous mobile robots with no common sense of orientation
Proceedings of the second ACM international workshop on Principles of mobile computing
An Incremental Self-Deployment Algorithm for Mobile Sensor Networks
Autonomous Robots
Cooperative mobile robotics: antecedents and directions
IROS '95 Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems-Volume 1 - Volume 1
A Bidding Protocol for Deploying Mobile Sensors
ICNP '03 Proceedings of the 11th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols
Sensor deployment and target localization in distributed sensor networks
ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS)
Fault-tolerant gathering algorithms for autonomous mobile robots
SODA '04 Proceedings of the fifteenth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
Sensor Networks
Gathering of asynchronous robots with limited visibility
Theoretical Computer Science
Energy optimal data propagation in wireless sensor networks
Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing
Dynamic compass models and gathering algorithms for autonomous mobile robots
SIROCCO'07 Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Structural information and communication complexity
Local algorithms for autonomous robot systems
SIROCCO'06 Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Structural Information and Communication Complexity
Models and algorithms for wireless sensor networks (smart dust)
SOFSEM'06 Proceedings of the 32nd conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science
Fault-tolerant and self-stabilizing mobile robots gathering
DISC'06 Proceedings of the 20th international conference on Distributed Computing
Biangular circle formation by asynchronous mobile robots
SIROCCO'05 Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Structural Information and Communication Complexity
Energy-efficient deployment of Intelligent Mobile sensor networks
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans
Deployment of Asynchronous Robotic Sensors in Unknown Orthogonal Environments
Algorithmic Aspects of Wireless Sensor Networks
Separation of Circulating Tokens
SSS '09 Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems
On the computational power of oblivious robots: forming a series of geometric patterns
Proceedings of the 29th ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS symposium on Principles of distributed computing
Multi-agent deployment on a ring graph
ANTS'10 Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Swarm intelligence
Connectivity-preserving scattering of mobile robots with limited visibility
SSS'10 Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Stabilization, safety, and security of distributed systems
Uniform multi-agent deployment on a ring
Theoretical Computer Science
Self-* in Multimedia Communication Overlays
Computer Communications
Hi-index | 5.24 |
Mobile sensors can self-deploy in a purely decentralized and distributed fashion, so as to reach in a finite time a state of static equilibrium in which they uniformly cover the environment. We consider the self-deployment problem in a ring (e.g., a circular rim); in particular we investigate under what conditions the problem is solvable by a collection of identical sensors without a global coordinate system, however capable of determining the location (in their local coordinate system) of the other sensors within a fixed distance (called visibility radius). A self-deployment is exact if within finite time the distance between any two consecutive sensors along the ring is the same, d; it is @e-approximate if within finite time the distance between two consecutive sensors is between d-@e and d+@e. We prove that exact self-deployment is impossible if the sensors do not share a common orientation of the ring. This impossibility result holds even if the sensors have unlimited memory of the past, their visibility radius is unlimited, and all their actions, when active, are instantaneous. We thus consider the problem in an oriented ring. We prove that if the sensors know the desired final distance d, then exact self-deployment is possible. If the desired final distance d is not known, we prove that @e-approximate self-deployment is possible for any chosen @e0. The proofs of these results are constructive. In each case we present a simple protocol that allows the sensors to achieve the claimed level of self-deployment. These positive results hold even if sensors are oblivious (i.e., have no memory of past actions and computations), asynchronous (i.e., a sensor becomes active at unpredictable times and the duration of its actions is unpredictable), and have limited visibility radius. Our protocols can be employed, without modifications, on the perimeter of any convex region.