Optimal Strategies for Patrolling Fences

Abstract

A classical multi-agent fence patrolling problem asks: What is the maximum length L of a line fence that k agents with maximum speeds v_1,..., v_k can patrol if each point on the line needs to be visited at least once every unit of time. It is easy to see that L = alpha sum_{i=1}^k v_i for some efficiency alpha in [1/2,1). After a series of works [Czyzowicz et al., 2011; Dumitrescu et al., 2014; Kawamura and Kobayashi, 2015; Kawamura and Soejima, 2015] giving better and better efficiencies, it was conjectured by Kawamura and Soejima [Kawamura and Soejima, 2015] that the best possible efficiency approaches 2/3. No upper bounds on the efficiency below 1 were known. 
We prove the first such upper bounds and tightly bound the optimal efficiency in terms of the minimum speed ratio s = {v_{max}}/{v_{min}} and the number of agents k. Our bounds of alpha <= 1/{1 + 1/s} and alpha <= 1 - 1/(sqrt{k)+1} imply that in order to achieve efficiency 1 - epsilon, at least k >= Omega(epsilon^{-2}) agents with a speed ratio of s >= Omega(epsilon^{-1}) are necessary. Guided by our upper bounds, we construct a scheme whose efficiency approaches 1, disproving the conjecture stated above. Our scheme asymptotically matches our upper bounds in terms of the maximal speed difference and the number of agents used.
A variation of the fence patrolling problem considers a circular fence instead and asks for its circumference to be maximized. We consider the unidirectional case of this variation, where all agents are only allowed to move in one direction, say clockwise. At first, a strategy yielding L = max_{r in [k]} r * v_r where v_1 >= v_2 >= ... >= v_k was conjectured to be optimal by Czyzowicz et al. [Czyzowicz et al., 2011] This was proven not to be the case by giving constructions for only specific numbers of agents with marginal improvements of L. We give a general construction that yields L = 1/{33 log_e log_2(k)} sum_{i=1}^k v_i for any set of agents, which in particular for the case 1, 1/2, ..., 1/k diverges as k - > infty, thus resolving a conjecture by Kawamura and Soejima [Kawamura and Soejima, 2015] affirmatively.