Beyond Pairwise Comparisons: Unveiling Structural Landscape of Mobile Robot Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Naito, Shota, Ninomiya, Tsukasa, Wada, Koichi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Naito, Shota
Ninomiya, Tsukasa
Wada, Koichi
author_facet Naito, Shota
Ninomiya, Tsukasa
Wada, Koichi
contents Understanding the computational power of mobile robot systems is a fundamental challenge in distributed computing. While prior work has focused on pairwise separations between models, we explore how robot capabilities, light observability, and scheduler synchrony interact in more complex ways. We first show that the Exponential Times Expansion (ETE) problem is solvable only in the strongest model -- fully-synchronous robots with full mutual lights ($\mathcal{LUMT}^F$). We then introduce the Hexagonal Edge Traversal (HET) and TAR(d)* problems to demonstrate how internal memory and lights interact with synchrony: under weak synchrony, internal memory alone is insufficient, while full synchrony can substitute for both lights and memory. In the asynchronous setting, we classify problems such as LP-MLCv, VEC, and ZCC to show fine-grained separations between $\mathcal{FSTA}$ and $\mathcal{FCOM}$ robots. We also analyze Vertex Traversal Rendezvous (VTR) and Leave Place Convergence (LP-Cv), illustrating the limitations of internal memory in symmetric settings. These results extend the known separation map of 14 canonical robot models, revealing structural phenomena only visible through higher-order comparisons. Our work provides new impossibility criteria and deepens the understanding of how observability, memory, and synchrony collectively shape the computational power of mobile robots.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_19805
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beyond Pairwise Comparisons: Unveiling Structural Landscape of Mobile Robot Models
Naito, Shota
Ninomiya, Tsukasa
Wada, Koichi
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Robotics
Understanding the computational power of mobile robot systems is a fundamental challenge in distributed computing. While prior work has focused on pairwise separations between models, we explore how robot capabilities, light observability, and scheduler synchrony interact in more complex ways. We first show that the Exponential Times Expansion (ETE) problem is solvable only in the strongest model -- fully-synchronous robots with full mutual lights ($\mathcal{LUMT}^F$). We then introduce the Hexagonal Edge Traversal (HET) and TAR(d)* problems to demonstrate how internal memory and lights interact with synchrony: under weak synchrony, internal memory alone is insufficient, while full synchrony can substitute for both lights and memory. In the asynchronous setting, we classify problems such as LP-MLCv, VEC, and ZCC to show fine-grained separations between $\mathcal{FSTA}$ and $\mathcal{FCOM}$ robots. We also analyze Vertex Traversal Rendezvous (VTR) and Leave Place Convergence (LP-Cv), illustrating the limitations of internal memory in symmetric settings. These results extend the known separation map of 14 canonical robot models, revealing structural phenomena only visible through higher-order comparisons. Our work provides new impossibility criteria and deepens the understanding of how observability, memory, and synchrony collectively shape the computational power of mobile robots.
title Beyond Pairwise Comparisons: Unveiling Structural Landscape of Mobile Robot Models
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.19805