International audienceA finite automaton, simply referred to as a {\em robot}, has to explore a graph, i.e., visit all the nodes of the graph. The robot has no a priori knowledge of the topology of the graph or of its size. It is known that, for any $k$-state robot, there exists a $(k+1)$-node graph of maximum degree~3 that the robot cannot explore. This paper considers the effects of allowing the system designer to add short labels to the graph nodes in a preprocessing stage, and using these labels to guide the exploration by the robot. We describe an exploration algorithm that given appropriate 2-bit labels (in fact, only 3-valued labels) allows a robot to explore all graphs. Furthermore, we describe a suitable labeling algorithm for generating the required labels, in linear time. We also show how to modify our labeling scheme so that a robot can explore all graphs of bounded degree, given appropriate 1-bit labels. In other words, although there is no robot able to explore all graphs of maximum degree~3, there is a robot $\cR$, and a way to color in black or white the nodes of any bounded-degree graph $G$, so that $\cR$ can explore the colored graph $G$. Finally, we give impossibility results regarding graph exploration by a robot with no internal memory ({\it i.e.}, a single state automaton)

Two anonymous mobile agents (robots) moving in an asynchronous manner have to meet in an infinite grid of dimension δ > 0, starting from two arbitrary positions at distance at most d. Since the problem is clearly infeasible in such general setting, we assume that the grid is embedded in a δ-dimensional Euclidean space and that each agent knows the Cartesian coordinates of its own initial position (but not the one of the other agent). We design an algorithm permitting the agents to meet after traversing a trajectory of length O(d δ polylog d). This bound for the case of 2d-grids subsumes the main result of [12]. The algorithm is almost optimal, since the Ω(d δ) lower bound is straightforward. Further, we apply our rendezvous method to the following network design problem. The ports of the δ-dimensional grid have to be set such that two anonymous agents starting at distance at most d from each other will always meet, moving in an asynchronous manner, after traversing a O(d δ polylog d) length trajectory. We can also apply our method to a version of the geometric rendezvous problem. Two anonymous agents move asynchronously in the δ-dimensional Euclidean space. The agents have the radii of visibility of r1 and r2, respectively. Each agent knows only its own initial position and its own radius of visibility. The agents meet when one agent is visible to the other one. We propose an algorithm designing the trajectory of each agent, so that they always meet after traveling a total distance of O((d r) δ polylog(d r)), where r = min(r1, r2) and for r ≥ 1. 1 Introduction 1.1 The problem and the model Consider a Euclidean δ-dimensional space F. We construct an infinite grid G δ of dimension δ as follows. The set of nodes of G δ are the points of F with ⋆ Partially supported by the ANR project ALADDIN, the INRIA project CEPAGE and by a France-Israel cooperation grant (Multi-Computing project).

Abstract. Θ k -graphs are geometric graphs that appear in the context of graph navigation. The shortest-path metric of these graphs is known to approximate the Euclidean complete graph up to a factor depending on the cone number k and the dimension of the space. TD-Delaunay graphs, a.k.a. triangular-distance Delaunay triangulations, introduced by Chew, have been shown to be plane 2-spanners of the 2D Euclidean complete graph, i.e., the distance in the TD-Delaunay graph between any two points is no more than twice the distance in the plane. Orthogonal surfaces are geometric objects defined from independent sets of points of the Euclidean space. Orthogonal surfaces are well studied in combinatorics (orders, integer programming) and in algebra. From orthogonal surfaces, geometric graphs, called geodesic embeddings can be built. In this paper, we introduce a specific subgraph of the Θ6-graph defined in the 2D Euclidean space, namely the half-Θ6-graph, composed of the evencone edges of the Θ6-graph. Our main contribution is to show that these graphs are exactly the TD-Delaunay graphs, and are strongly connected to the geodesic embeddings of orthogonal surfaces of coplanar points in the 3D Euclidean space. Using these new bridges between these three fields, we establish:-Every Θ6-graph is the union of two spanning TD-Delaunay graphs.In particular, Θ6-graphs are 2-spanners of the Euclidean graph, and the bound of 2 on the stretch factor is the best possible. It was not known that Θ6-graphs are t-spanners for some constant t, and Θ7-graphs were only known to be t-spanners for t ≈ 7.562. -Every plane triangulation is TD-Delaunay realizable, i.e., every combinatorial plane graph for which all its interior faces are triangles is the TD-Delaunay graph of some point set in the plane. Such realizability property does not hold for classical Delaunay triangulations.

A finite automaton, simply referred to as a robot, has to explore a graph whose nodes are unlabeled and whose edge ports are locally labeled at each node. The robot has no a priori knowledge of the topology of the graph or of its size. Its task is to traverse all the edges of the graph. We first show that, for any K-state robot and any d 3, there exists a planar graph of maximum degree d with at most K + 1 nodes that the robot cannot explore. This bound improves all previous bounds in the literature. More interestingly, we show that, in order to explore all graphs of diameter D and maximum degree d, a robot needs (D log d) memory bits, even if we restrict the exploration to planar graphs. This latter bound is tight. Indeed, a simple DFS up to depth D + 1 enables a robot to explore any graph of diameter D and maximum degree d using a memory of size O(D log d) bits. We thus prove that the worst case space complexity of graph exploration is (D log d) bits.

Abstract. We consider the problem of exploring an anonymous unoriented ring by a team of k identical, oblivious, asynchronous mobile robots that can view the environment but cannot communicate. This weak scenario is standard when the spatial universe in which the robots operate is the two-dimentional plane, but (with one exception) has not been investigated before. We indeed show that, although the lack of these capabilities renders the problems considerably more difficult, ring exploration is still possible. We show that the minimum number ρ(n) of robots that can explore a ring of size n is O(log n) and that ρ(n) = Ω(log n) for arbitrarily large n. On one hand we give an algorithm that explores the ring starting from any initial configuration, provided that n and k are co-prime, and we show that there always exist such k in O(log n). On the other hand we show that Ω(log n) agents are necessary for arbitrarily large n. Notice that, when k and n are not co-prime, the problem is sometimes unsolvable (i.e., there are initial configurations for which the exploration cannot be done). This is the case, e.g., when k divides n.

International audienceWe study the problem of the amount of information (advice) about a graph that must be given to its nodes in order to achieve fast distributed computations. The required size of the advice enables to measure the information sensitivity of a network problem. A problem is information sensitive if little advice is enough to solve the problem rapidly (i.e., much faster than in the absence of any advice), whereas it is information insensitive if it requires giving a lot of information to the nodes in order to ensure fast computation of the solution. In this paper, we study the information sensitivity of distributed graph coloring

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Abstract. We consider the problem of exploring an anonymous unoriented ring by a team of k identical, oblivious, asynchronous mobile robots that can view the environment but cannot communicate. This weak scenario is standard when the spatial universe in which the robots operate is the two-dimentional plane, but (with one exception) has not been investigated before. We indeed show that, although the lack of these capabilities renders the problems considerably more difficult, ring exploration is still possible. We show that the minimum number ρ(n) of robots that can explore a ring of size n is O(log n) and that ρ(n) = Ω(log n) for arbitrarily large n. On one hand we give an algorithm that explores the ring starting from any initial configuration, provided that n and k are co-prime, and we show that there always exist such k in O(log n). On the other hand we show that Ω(log n) agents are necessary for arbitrarily large n. Notice that, when k and n are not co-prime, the problem is sometimes unsolvable (i.e., there are initial configurations for which the exploration cannot be done). This is the case, e.g., when k divides n.