## Theory of Combinatorial Algorithms

Prof. Emo Welzl and Prof. Bernd Gärtner

# Mittagsseminar (in cooperation with M. Ghaffari, A. Steger and B. Sudakov)

 Mittagsseminar Talk Information

Date and Time: Tuesday, March 14, 2017, 12:15 pm

Duration: 30 minutes

Location: CAB G51

Speaker: Jara Uitto

## Lower Bounds for the Ants Nearby Treasure Search (ANTS) Problem

Consider $k$ mobile agents placed at the origin of an infinite grid that collaboratively search for a treasure hidden in the grid by an adversary. The agents are controlled by either deterministic or randomized finite automata and, given that agents $a$ and $a'$ share a grid cell, they are able to communicate with each other through constant size messages. We show that the availability of random bits and the timing parameters of the execution environment have a direct impact on the minimum number of agents needed to find the treasure. The lower bounds on the number of agents are complemented with matching upper bounds.

Previous talks by year:   2018  2017  2016  2015  2014  2013  2012  2011  2010  2009  2008  2007  2006  2005  2004  2003  2002  2001  2000  1999  1998  1997  1996

Information for students and suggested topics for student talks