Building a Nest by an Automaton

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Czyzowicz, Jurek, Dereniowski, Dariusz, Pelc, Andrzej
Format: Preprint
Published: 2019
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author Czyzowicz, Jurek
Dereniowski, Dariusz
Pelc, Andrzej
author_facet Czyzowicz, Jurek
Dereniowski, Dariusz
Pelc, Andrzej
contents A robot modeled as a deterministic finite automaton has to build a structure from material available to it. The robot navigates in the infinite oriented grid $\mathbb{Z} \times \mathbb{Z}$. Some cells of the grid are full (contain a brick) and others are empty. The subgraph of the grid induced by full cells, called the field, is initially connected. The (Manhattan) distance between the farthest cells of the field is called its span. The robot starts at a full cell. It can carry at most one brick at a time. At each step it can pick a brick from a full cell, move to an adjacent cell and drop a brick at an empty cell. The aim of the robot is to construct the most compact possible structure composed of all bricks, i.e., a nest. That is, the robot has to move all bricks in such a way that the span of the resulting field be the smallest. Our main result is the design of a deterministic finite automaton that accomplishes this task and subsequently stops, for every initially connected field, in time $O(sz)$, where $s$ is the span of the initial field and $z$ is the number of bricks. We show that this complexity is optimal.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_1904_10850
institution arXiv
publishDate 2019
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Building a Nest by an Automaton
Czyzowicz, Jurek
Dereniowski, Dariusz
Pelc, Andrzej
Data Structures and Algorithms
68W40, 68W27
A robot modeled as a deterministic finite automaton has to build a structure from material available to it. The robot navigates in the infinite oriented grid $\mathbb{Z} \times \mathbb{Z}$. Some cells of the grid are full (contain a brick) and others are empty. The subgraph of the grid induced by full cells, called the field, is initially connected. The (Manhattan) distance between the farthest cells of the field is called its span. The robot starts at a full cell. It can carry at most one brick at a time. At each step it can pick a brick from a full cell, move to an adjacent cell and drop a brick at an empty cell. The aim of the robot is to construct the most compact possible structure composed of all bricks, i.e., a nest. That is, the robot has to move all bricks in such a way that the span of the resulting field be the smallest. Our main result is the design of a deterministic finite automaton that accomplishes this task and subsequently stops, for every initially connected field, in time $O(sz)$, where $s$ is the span of the initial field and $z$ is the number of bricks. We show that this complexity is optimal.
title Building a Nest by an Automaton
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
68W40, 68W27
url https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.10850