Symmetric Rendezvous Search on the Line With an Unknown Initial Distance

Published in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2013

D. Ozsoyeller, A. Beveridge and V. Isler, Symmetric Rendezvous Search on the Line With an Unknown Initial Distance, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, vol. 29, no. 6 (2013), pp. 1366-1379.

Preprint link: https://github.com/mathbeveridge/mathbeveridge.github.io/blob/master/files/rendezvous-line.pdf

In the rendezvous search problem, two robots at unknown locations must successfully meet somewhere in the environment. We provide a new symmetric strategy with a competitive ratio of 17.686 for total distance traveled and a competitive ratio of 24.843 for total time. We confirm our theoretical results through simulations and show that our algorithms are practical by reporting the results of real robot deployments in indoor environments.