Swarm search of expanding regions in grids: Lower bounds

Abstract

In this chapter we examine the dynamic generalization of the Cooperative Cleaners problem presented in [10] and in the previous chapter of this book, involving a swarm of collaborative drones that are required to search a dynamically expanding region on the grid (whose “pixels” that were visited by the drones can become “un-searched” after a certain period of time). The goal of the swarm’s members is to “clean” the spreading contamination in as little time as possible. In this work we present an algorithm-agnostic lower bound for the problem, as well as a collaborative swarm search algorithm, accompanied with a variety of experimental results.