Competitive Online Transportation Simplified

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Arndt, Stephen, Moseley, Benjamin, Pruhs, Kirk, Uetz, Marc
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Arndt, Stephen
Moseley, Benjamin
Pruhs, Kirk
Uetz, Marc
author_facet Arndt, Stephen
Moseley, Benjamin
Pruhs, Kirk
Uetz, Marc
contents The setting for the online transportation problem is a metric space $M$, populated by $m$ parking garages of varying capacities. Over time cars arrive in $M$, and must be irrevocably assigned to a parking garage upon arrival in a way that respects the garage capacities. The objective is to minimize the aggregate distance traveled by the cars. In 1998, Kalyanasundaram and Pruhs conjectured that there is a $(2m-1)$-competitive deterministic algorithm for the online transportation problem, matching the optimal competitive ratio for the simpler online metric matching problem. Recently, Harada and Itoh presented the first $O(m)$-competitive deterministic algorithm for the online transportation problem. Our contribution is an alternative algorithm design and analysis that we believe is simpler.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_08381
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Competitive Online Transportation Simplified
Arndt, Stephen
Moseley, Benjamin
Pruhs, Kirk
Uetz, Marc
Data Structures and Algorithms
The setting for the online transportation problem is a metric space $M$, populated by $m$ parking garages of varying capacities. Over time cars arrive in $M$, and must be irrevocably assigned to a parking garage upon arrival in a way that respects the garage capacities. The objective is to minimize the aggregate distance traveled by the cars. In 1998, Kalyanasundaram and Pruhs conjectured that there is a $(2m-1)$-competitive deterministic algorithm for the online transportation problem, matching the optimal competitive ratio for the simpler online metric matching problem. Recently, Harada and Itoh presented the first $O(m)$-competitive deterministic algorithm for the online transportation problem. Our contribution is an alternative algorithm design and analysis that we believe is simpler.
title Competitive Online Transportation Simplified
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08381