12 Search Results for "Dobrev, Stefan"

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.36
Beyond 2-Edge-Connectivity: Algorithms and Impossibility for Content-Oblivious Leader Election

Authors: Yi-Jun Chang, Lyuting Chen, and Haoran Zhou

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 362, 17th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2026)

Abstract
The content-oblivious model, introduced by Censor-Hillel, Cohen, Gelles, and Sela (PODC 2022; Distributed Computing 2023), captures an extremely weak form of communication where nodes can only send asynchronous, content-less pulses. They showed that in 2-edge-connected networks, any distributed algorithm can be simulated in the content-oblivious model, provided that a unique leader is designated a priori. Subsequent works of Frei, Gelles, Ghazy, and Nolin (DISC 2024) and Chalopin et al. (DISC 2025) developed content-oblivious leader election algorithms, first for unoriented rings and then for general 2-edge-connected graphs. These results establish that all graph problems are solvable in content-oblivious, 2-edge-connected networks. Much less is known about networks that are not 2-edge-connected. Censor-Hillel, Cohen, Gelles, and Sela showed that no non-constant function f(x,y) can be computed correctly by two parties using content-oblivious communication over a single edge, where one party holds x and the other holds y. This seemingly ruled out many natural graph problems on non-2-edge-connected graphs. In this work, we show that, with the knowledge of network topology G, leader election is possible in a wide range of graphs. Our main contributions are as follows: Impossibility: Graphs symmetric about an edge admit no randomized terminating leader election algorithm, even when nodes have unique identifiers and full knowledge of G. Leader election algorithms: Trees that are not symmetric about any edge admit a quiescently terminating leader election algorithm with topology knowledge, even in anonymous networks, using O(n²) messages, where n is the number of nodes. Moreover, even-diameter trees admit a terminating leader election given only the knowledge of the network diameter D = 2r, with message complexity O(nr). Necessity of topology knowledge: In the family of graphs 𝒢 = {P₃, P₅}, both the 3-path P₃ and the 5-path P₅ admit a quiescently terminating leader election if nodes know the topology exactly. However, if nodes only know that the underlying topology belongs to 𝒢, then terminating leader election is impossible.
Cite as

Yi-Jun Chang, Lyuting Chen, and Haoran Zhou. Beyond 2-Edge-Connectivity: Algorithms and Impossibility for Content-Oblivious Leader Election. In 17th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 362, pp. 36:1-36:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{chang_et_al:LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.36,
  author =	{Chang, Yi-Jun and Chen, Lyuting and Zhou, Haoran},
  title =	{{Beyond 2-Edge-Connectivity: Algorithms and Impossibility for Content-Oblivious Leader Election}},
  booktitle =	{17th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2026)},
  pages =	{36:1--36:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-410-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{362},
  editor =	{Saraf, Shubhangi},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.36},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-253239},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.36},
  annote =	{Keywords: Asynchronous model, fault tolerance, quiescent termination}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.32
Recolorable Graph Exploration by an Oblivious Agent with Fewer Colors

Authors: Shota Takahashi, Haruki Kanaya, Shoma Hiraoka, Ryota Eguchi, and Yuichi Sudo

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 361, 29th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2025)

Abstract
Recently, Böckenhauer, Frei, Unger, and Wehner (SIROCCO 2023) introduced a novel variant of the graph exploration problem in which a single memoryless agent must visit all nodes of an unknown, undirected, and connected graph before returning to its starting node. Unlike the standard model for mobile agents, edges are not labeled with port numbers. Instead, the agent can color its current node and observe the color of each neighboring node. To move, it specifies a target color and then moves to an adversarially chosen neighbor of that color. They analyzed the minimum number of colors required for successful exploration and proposed an elegant algorithm that enables the agent to explore an arbitrary graph using only eight colors. In this paper, we present a novel graph exploration algorithm that requires only six colors. Furthermore, we prove that five colors are sufficient if we consider only a restricted class of graphs, which we call the φ-free graphs, a class that includes every graph with maximum degree at most three and every cactus.
Cite as

Shota Takahashi, Haruki Kanaya, Shoma Hiraoka, Ryota Eguchi, and Yuichi Sudo. Recolorable Graph Exploration by an Oblivious Agent with Fewer Colors. In 29th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 361, pp. 32:1-32:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{takahashi_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.32,
  author =	{Takahashi, Shota and Kanaya, Haruki and Hiraoka, Shoma and Eguchi, Ryota and Sudo, Yuichi},
  title =	{{Recolorable Graph Exploration by an Oblivious Agent with Fewer Colors}},
  booktitle =	{29th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2025)},
  pages =	{32:1--32:15},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-409-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{361},
  editor =	{Arusoaie, Andrei and Onica, Emanuel and Spear, Michael and Tucci-Piergiovanni, Sara},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.32},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-252052},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.32},
  annote =	{Keywords: mobile agents, recolorable graphs, graph exploration}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.30
Team Formation and Applications

Authors: Yuval Emek, Shay Kutten, Ido Rafael, and Gadi Taubenfeld

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 356, 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)

Abstract
A novel long-lived distributed problem, called Team Formation (TF), is introduced together with a message- and time-efficient randomized algorithm. The problem is defined over the asynchronous model with a complete communication graph, using bounded size messages, where a certain fraction of the nodes may experience a generalized, strictly stronger, version of initial failures. The goal of a TF algorithm is to assemble tokens injected by the environment, in a distributed manner, into teams of size σ, where σ is a parameter of the problem. The usefulness of TF is demonstrated by using it to derive efficient algorithms for many distributed problems. Specifically, we show that various (one-shot as well as long-lived) distributed problems reduce to TF. This includes well-known (and extensively studied) distributed problems such as several versions of leader election and threshold detection. For example, we are the first to break the linear message complexity bound for asynchronous implicit leader election. We also improve the time complexity of message-optimal algorithms for asynchronous explicit leader election. Other distributed problems that reduce to TF are new ones, including matching players in online gaming platforms, a generalization of gathering, constructing a perfect matching in an induced subgraph of the complete graph, and more. To complement our positive contribution, we establish a tight lower bound on the message complexity of TF algorithms.
Cite as

Yuval Emek, Shay Kutten, Ido Rafael, and Gadi Taubenfeld. Team Formation and Applications. In 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 356, pp. 30:1-30:25, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{emek_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2025.30,
  author =	{Emek, Yuval and Kutten, Shay and Rafael, Ido and Taubenfeld, Gadi},
  title =	{{Team Formation and Applications}},
  booktitle =	{39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)},
  pages =	{30:1--30:25},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-402-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{356},
  editor =	{Kowalski, Dariusz R.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.30},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-248474},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.30},
  annote =	{Keywords: asynchronous message-passing, complete communication graph, initial failures, leader election, matching}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.12
Distributed Computation with Local Advice

Authors: Alkida Balliu, Sebastian Brandt, Fabian Kuhn, Krzysztof Nowicki, Dennis Olivetti, Eva Rotenberg, and Jukka Suomela

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 356, 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)

Abstract
Algorithms with advice have received ample attention in the distributed and online settings, and they have recently proven useful also in dynamic settings. In this work we study local computation with advice: the goal is to solve a graph problem Π with a distributed algorithm in T(Δ) communication rounds, for some function T that only depends on the maximum degree Δ of the graph, and the key question is how many bits of advice per node are needed. Some of our results regard Locally Checkable Labeling problems (LCLs), which is an important family of problems that includes various coloring and orientation problems on finite-degree graphs. These are constraint-satisfaction graph problems that can be defined with a finite set of valid input/output-labeled neighborhoods. Our main results are: 1) Any locally checkable labeling problem can be solved with only 1 bit of advice per node in graphs with sub-exponential growth (the number of nodes within radius r is sub-exponential in r; for example, grids are such graphs). Moreover, we can make the set of nodes that carry advice bits arbitrarily sparse. As a corollary, any locally checkable labeling problem admits a locally checkable proof with 1 bit per node in graphs with sub-exponential growth. 2) The assumption of sub-exponential growth is complemented by a conditional lower bound: assuming the Exponential-Time Hypothesis, there are locally checkable labeling problems that cannot be solved in general with any constant number of bits per node. 3) In any graph we can find an almost-balanced orientation (indegrees and outdegrees differ by at most one) with 1 bit of advice per node, and again we can make the advice arbitrarily sparse. As a corollary, we can also compress an arbitrary subset of edges so that a node of degree d stores only d/2 + 2 bits, and we can decompress it locally, in T(Δ) rounds. 4) In any graph of maximum degree Δ, we can find a Δ-coloring (if it exists) with 1 bit of advice per node, and again, we can make the advice arbitrarily sparse. 5) In any 3-colorable graph, we can find a 3-coloring with 1 bit of advice per node. As a corollary, in bounded-degree graphs there is a locally checkable proof that certifies 3-colorability with 1 bit of advice per node, while prior work shows that this is not possible with a proof labeling scheme (PLS), which is a more restricted setting where the verifier can only see up to distance 1. Our work shows that for many problems the key threshold is not whether we can achieve 1 bit of advice per node, but whether we can make the advice arbitrarily sparse. To formalize this idea, we develop a general framework of composable schemas that enables us to build algorithms for local computation with advice in a modular fashion: once we have (1) a schema for solving Π₁ and (2) a schema for solving Π₂ assuming an oracle for Π₁, we can also compose them and obtain (3) a schema that solves Π₂ without the oracle. It turns out that many natural problems admit composable schemas, all of them can be solved with only 1 bit of advice, and we can make the advice arbitrarily sparse.
Cite as

Alkida Balliu, Sebastian Brandt, Fabian Kuhn, Krzysztof Nowicki, Dennis Olivetti, Eva Rotenberg, and Jukka Suomela. Distributed Computation with Local Advice. In 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 356, pp. 12:1-12:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{balliu_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2025.12,
  author =	{Balliu, Alkida and Brandt, Sebastian and Kuhn, Fabian and Nowicki, Krzysztof and Olivetti, Dennis and Rotenberg, Eva and Suomela, Jukka},
  title =	{{Distributed Computation with Local Advice}},
  booktitle =	{39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)},
  pages =	{12:1--12:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-402-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{356},
  editor =	{Kowalski, Dariusz R.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.12},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-248295},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.12},
  annote =	{Keywords: Distributed graph algorithms, LOCAL model, computation with advice, locally checkable labeling problems, proof labeling schemes, locally checkable proofs, graph coloring, exponential-time hypothesis}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.16
Perpetual Exploration in Anonymous Synchronous Networks with a Byzantine Black Hole

Authors: Adri Bhattacharya, Pritam Goswami, Evangelos Bampas, and Partha Sarathi Mandal

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 356, 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)

Abstract
In this paper, we investigate the following question: "How can a group of initially co-located mobile agents perpetually explore an unknown graph, when one stationary node occasionally behaves maliciously, under the control of an adversary?" This malicious node is termed as "Byzantine black hole (BBH)" and at any given round it may choose to destroy all visiting agents, or none of them. While investigating this question, we found out that this subtle power turns out to drastically undermine even basic exploration strategies which have been proposed in the context of a classical, always active, black hole. We study this perpetual exploration problem in the presence of at most one BBH, without initial knowledge of the network size. Since the underlying graph may be 1-connected, perpetual exploration of the entire graph may be infeasible. Accordingly, we define two variants of the problem, termed as PerpExploration-BBH and PerpExploration-BBH-Home. In the former, the agents are tasked to perform perpetual exploration of at least one component, obtained after the exclusion of the BBH. In the latter, the agents are tasked to perform perpetual exploration of the component which contains the home node, where agents are initially co-located. Naturally, PerpExploration-BBH-Home is a special case of PerpExploration-BBH. The mobile agents are controlled by a synchronous scheduler, and they communicate via face-to-face model of communication. The main objective in this paper is to determine the minimum number of agents necessary and sufficient to solve these problems. We first consider the problems in acyclic networks, and we obtain optimal algorithms that solve PerpExploration-BBH with 4 agents, and PerpExploration-BBH-Home with 6 agents in trees. The lower bounds hold even in path graphs. In general graphs, we give a non-trivial lower bound of 2Δ-1 agents for PerpExploration-BBH, and an upper bound of 3Δ+3 agents for PerpExploration-BBH-Home. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that studies a variant of a black hole in arbitrary networks, without initial topological knowledge about the network.
Cite as

Adri Bhattacharya, Pritam Goswami, Evangelos Bampas, and Partha Sarathi Mandal. Perpetual Exploration in Anonymous Synchronous Networks with a Byzantine Black Hole. In 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 356, pp. 16:1-16:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{bhattacharya_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2025.16,
  author =	{Bhattacharya, Adri and Goswami, Pritam and Bampas, Evangelos and Mandal, Partha Sarathi},
  title =	{{Perpetual Exploration in Anonymous Synchronous Networks with a Byzantine Black Hole}},
  booktitle =	{39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)},
  pages =	{16:1--16:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-402-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{356},
  editor =	{Kowalski, Dariusz R.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.16},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-248333},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: mobile agents, perpetual exploration, malicious host, Byzantine black hole}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.41
Natural Calamities Demand More Rescuers: Exploring Connectivity Time Dynamic Graphs

Authors: Ashish Saxena and Kaushik Mondal

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 356, 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)

Abstract
We study the exploration problem by mobile agents in Connectivity Time dynamic graphs. The Connectivity Time model was introduced by Michail et al. [JPDC 2014] and is arguably one of the weakest dynamic graph connectivity models. We prove that exploration is impossible in such graphs using ((n-1)(n-2))/2 mobile agents starting from an arbitrary initial configuration, even when agents have full knowledge of system parameters, global communication, full visibility, and infinite memory. We then present an exploration algorithm that uses ((n-1)(n-2))/2 + 1 agents equipped with global communication, 1-hop visibility and O(log n) memory.
Cite as

Ashish Saxena and Kaushik Mondal. Natural Calamities Demand More Rescuers: Exploring Connectivity Time Dynamic Graphs. In 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 356, pp. 41:1-41:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{saxena_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2025.41,
  author =	{Saxena, Ashish and Mondal, Kaushik},
  title =	{{Natural Calamities Demand More Rescuers: Exploring Connectivity Time Dynamic Graphs}},
  booktitle =	{39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)},
  pages =	{41:1--41:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-402-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{356},
  editor =	{Kowalski, Dariusz R.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.41},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-248585},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.41},
  annote =	{Keywords: Mobile agents, Anonymous graphs, Exploration, Dynamic graphs, Deterministic algorithm}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2025.7
Temporal Explorability Games

Authors: Pete Austin, Sougata Bose, Nicolas Mazzocchi, and Patrick Totzke

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 348, 36th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2025)

Abstract
Temporal graphs extend ordinary graphs with discrete time that affects the availability of edges. We consider solving games played on temporal graphs where one player aims to explore the graph, i.e., visit all vertices. The complexity depends majorly on two factors: the presence of an adversary and how edge availability is specified. We demonstrate that on static graphs, where edges are always available, solving explorability games is just as hard as solving reachability games. In contrast, on temporal graphs, the complexity of explorability coincides with generalized reachability (NP-complete for one-player and PSPACE-complete for two player games). We show that if temporal graphs are given symbolically, even one-player reachability (and thus explorability and generalized reachability) games are PSPACE-hard. For one player, all these are also solvable in PSPACE and for two players, they are in PSPACE, EXP and EXP, respectively.
Cite as

Pete Austin, Sougata Bose, Nicolas Mazzocchi, and Patrick Totzke. Temporal Explorability Games. In 36th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 348, pp. 7:1-7:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{austin_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2025.7,
  author =	{Austin, Pete and Bose, Sougata and Mazzocchi, Nicolas and Totzke, Patrick},
  title =	{{Temporal Explorability Games}},
  booktitle =	{36th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2025)},
  pages =	{7:1--7:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-389-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{348},
  editor =	{Bouyer, Patricia and van de Pol, Jaco},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2025.7},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239575},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2025.7},
  annote =	{Keywords: Temporal Graphs, Explorability, Reachability, Games}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SAND.2025.10
Fault Detection and Identification by Autonomous Mobile Robots

Authors: Stefano Clemente and Caterina Feletti

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 330, 4th Symposium on Algorithmic Foundations of Dynamic Networks (SAND 2025)

Abstract
The Look-Compute-Move model (LCM) is adopted to study swarms of mobile robots that have to solve a given problem. Robots are generally assumed to be autonomous, indistinguishable, anonymous, homogeneous and to move on the Euclidean plane. Different LCM sub-models have been theorized to study different settings and their computational power. Notably, the literature has focused on four base models (i.e., OBLOT, FSTA, FCOM, LUMI) that differ in memory and communication capabilities, and in different synchronization modes (e.g., fully synchronous FSYNCH, semi-synchronous SSYNCH). In this paper, we consider fault-prone models where robots can suffer from crash faults: each robot may irremediably stop working after an unpredictable time. We study the general Fault Detection (FD) problem which is solved by a swarm if it correctly detects whether a faulty robot exists in the swarm. The Fault Identification (FI) problem additionally requires identifying which robots are faulty. We consider 12 LCM sub-models (OBLOT, FSTA, FCOM, LUMI, combined with FSYNCH, SSYNCH, and the round-robin RROBIN) and we study the (im)possibility of designing reliable procedures to solve FD or FI. In particular, we propose three distributed algorithms so that a swarm can collectively solve FD under the models LUMI^FSYNCH, FCOM^FSYNCH, and LUMI^RROBIN.
Cite as

Stefano Clemente and Caterina Feletti. Fault Detection and Identification by Autonomous Mobile Robots. In 4th Symposium on Algorithmic Foundations of Dynamic Networks (SAND 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 330, pp. 10:1-10:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{clemente_et_al:LIPIcs.SAND.2025.10,
  author =	{Clemente, Stefano and Feletti, Caterina},
  title =	{{Fault Detection and Identification by Autonomous Mobile Robots}},
  booktitle =	{4th Symposium on Algorithmic Foundations of Dynamic Networks (SAND 2025)},
  pages =	{10:1--10:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-368-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{330},
  editor =	{Meeks, Kitty and Scheideler, Christian},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SAND.2025.10},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-230639},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SAND.2025.10},
  annote =	{Keywords: Autonomous mobile robots, Faulty robots, Look-Compute-Move, Fault detection, Fault identification, Round-robin}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.17
Perpetual Exploration of a Ring in Presence of Byzantine Black Hole

Authors: Pritam Goswami, Adri Bhattacharya, Raja Das, and Partha Sarathi Mandal

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 324, 28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024)

Abstract
Perpetual exploration stands as a fundamental problem in the domain of distributed mobile agent algorithms, where the objective is to ensure that each node within a graph is visited by at least one agent infinitely often. While this issue has received significant attention, particularly concerning ring topologies, the presence of malicious nodes, referred to as black holes, adds more complexity. A black hole can destroy any incoming agent without leaving any trace of its existence. In [Bampas et al., 2015; Královič and Miklík, 2010], the authors have considered this problem in the context of periodic data retrieval. They introduced a variant of a black hole called gray hole (where the adversary chooses whether to destroy an agent or let it pass) among other variants, and showed that 4 asynchronous and co-located agents are necessary and sufficient to solve the periodic data retrieval problem (hence perpetual exploration) in the presence of such a gray hole if each of the nodes of the ring has a whiteboard. This paper investigates the exploration of a ring by introducing a realistic variant of a gray hole, called a "Byzantine black hole". In addition to the usual capabilities of a gray hole, the adversary can also choose whether to erase any previously stored information on that node. Note that in [Bampas et al., 2015; Královič and Miklík, 2010], this problem was considered with only one particular initial scenario (i.e., agents are initially co-located) and one specific communication model (i.e., whiteboard). Now, there can be many other initial scenarios where all agents might not be co-located (i.e., they may be scattered). Also, there are many weaker communications models such as Face-to-Face and Pebble, where this perpetual exploration problem is yet to be investigated in the presence of a Byzantine black hole. The main results of our paper focus on minimizing the number of agents while guaranteeing that they perform the perpetual exploration on a ring even in the presence of a Byzantine black hole under different communication models and for different starting scenarios. On the positive side, as a byproduct of our work, we achieved a better upper and lower bound result (i.e., 3 agents) for perpetual exploration in the presence of a Byzantine black hole (which is a more generalized version of a gray hole), by trading-off the scheduler capability, when the agents are initially co-located, and each node contains a whiteboard.
Cite as

Pritam Goswami, Adri Bhattacharya, Raja Das, and Partha Sarathi Mandal. Perpetual Exploration of a Ring in Presence of Byzantine Black Hole. In 28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 324, pp. 17:1-17:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{goswami_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.17,
  author =	{Goswami, Pritam and Bhattacharya, Adri and Das, Raja and Mandal, Partha Sarathi},
  title =	{{Perpetual Exploration of a Ring in Presence of Byzantine Black Hole}},
  booktitle =	{28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024)},
  pages =	{17:1--17:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-360-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{324},
  editor =	{Bonomi, Silvia and Galletta, Letterio and Rivi\`{e}re, Etienne and Schiavoni, Valerio},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.17},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-225532},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.17},
  annote =	{Keywords: Mobile Agents, Exploration, Ring, Black Hole, Malicious host, Byzantine Fault}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.9
Crash-Tolerant Exploration of Trees by Energy-Sharing Mobile Agents

Authors: Quentin Bramas, Toshimitsu Masuzawa, and Sébastien Tixeuil

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 324, 28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024)

Abstract
We consider the problem of graph exploration by energy sharing mobile agents that are subject to crash faults. More precisely, we consider a team of two agents where at most one of them may fail unpredictably, and the considered topology is that of connected acyclic graphs (i.e. trees). We consider both the asynchronous and the synchronous settings, and we provide necessary and sufficient conditions about the energy.
Cite as

Quentin Bramas, Toshimitsu Masuzawa, and Sébastien Tixeuil. Crash-Tolerant Exploration of Trees by Energy-Sharing Mobile Agents. In 28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 324, pp. 9:1-9:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{bramas_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.9,
  author =	{Bramas, Quentin and Masuzawa, Toshimitsu and Tixeuil, S\'{e}bastien},
  title =	{{Crash-Tolerant Exploration of Trees by Energy-Sharing Mobile Agents}},
  booktitle =	{28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024)},
  pages =	{9:1--9:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-360-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{324},
  editor =	{Bonomi, Silvia and Galletta, Letterio and Rivi\`{e}re, Etienne and Schiavoni, Valerio},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.9},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-225452},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.9},
  annote =	{Keywords: Mobile Agents, Distributed Algorithms, Energy sharing}
}
Document
Track C: Foundations of Networks and Multi-Agent Systems: Models, Algorithms and Information Management
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2019.139
Exploration of High-Dimensional Grids by Finite Automata

Authors: Stefan Dobrev, Lata Narayanan, Jaroslav Opatrny, and Denis Pankratov

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 132, 46th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2019)

Abstract
We consider the problem of finding a treasure at an unknown point of an n-dimensional infinite grid, n >= 3, by initially collocated finite automaton agents (scouts/robots). Recently, the problem has been well characterized for 2 dimensions for deterministic as well as randomized agents, both in synchronous and semi-synchronous models [S. Brandt et al., 2018; Y. Emek et al., 2015]. It has been conjectured that n+1 randomized agents are necessary to solve this problem in the n-dimensional grid [L. Cohen et al., 2017]. In this paper we disprove the conjecture in a strong sense: we show that three randomized synchronous agents suffice to explore an n-dimensional grid for any n. Our algorithm is optimal in terms of the number of the agents. Our key insight is that a constant number of finite automaton agents can, by their positions and movements, implement a stack, which can store the path being explored. We also show how to implement our algorithm using: four randomized semi-synchronous agents; four deterministic synchronous agents; or five deterministic semi-synchronous agents. We give a different algorithm that uses 4 deterministic semi-synchronous agents for the 3-dimensional grid. This is provably optimal, and surprisingly, matches the result for 2 dimensions. For n >= 4, the time complexity of the solutions mentioned above is exponential in distance D of the treasure from the starting point of the agents. We show that in the deterministic case, one additional agent brings the time down to a polynomial. Finally, we focus on algorithms that never venture much beyond the distance D. We describe an algorithm that uses O(sqrt{n}) semi-synchronous deterministic agents that never go beyond 2D, as well as show that any algorithm using 3 synchronous deterministic agents in 3 dimensions, if it exists, must travel beyond Omega(D^{3/2}) from the origin.
Cite as

Stefan Dobrev, Lata Narayanan, Jaroslav Opatrny, and Denis Pankratov. Exploration of High-Dimensional Grids by Finite Automata. In 46th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2019). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 132, pp. 139:1-139:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2019)

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@InProceedings{dobrev_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2019.139,
  author =	{Dobrev, Stefan and Narayanan, Lata and Opatrny, Jaroslav and Pankratov, Denis},
  title =	{{Exploration of High-Dimensional Grids by Finite Automata}},
  booktitle =	{46th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2019)},
  pages =	{139:1--139:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-109-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{132},
  editor =	{Baier, Christel and Chatzigiannakis, Ioannis and Flocchini, Paola and Leonardi, Stefano},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2019.139},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-107153},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2019.139},
  annote =	{Keywords: Multi-agent systems, finite state machines, high-dimensional grids, robot exploration, randomized agents, semi-synchronous and synchronous agents}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2017.14
Treasure Hunt with Barely Communicating Agents

Authors: Stefan Dobrev, Rastislav Královic, and Dana Pardubská

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 95, 21st International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2017)

Abstract
We consider the problem of fault-tolerant parallel exhaustive search, a.k.a. “Treasure Hunt”, introduced by Fraigniaud, Korman and Rodeh in [13]: Imagine an infinite list of “boxes”, one of which contains a “treasure”. The ordering of the boxes reflects the importance of finding the treasure in a given box. There are k agents, whose goal is to locate the treasure in the least amount of time. The system is synchronous; at every step, an agent can ”open” a box and see whether the treasure is there. The hunt finishes when the first agent locates the treasure. The original paper [13] considers non-cooperating randomized agents, out of which at most f can fail, with the failure pattern determined by an adversary. In this paper, we consider deterministic agents and investigate two failure models: The failing-agents model from [13] and a “black hole” model: At most f boxes contain “black holes”, placed by the adversary. When an agent opens a box containing a black hole, the agent disappears without an observable trace. The crucial distinction, however, is that we consider “barely communicating” or “indirectly weakly communicating” agents: When an agent opens a box, it can tell whether the box has been previously opened. There are no other means of direct or indirect communication between the agents. We show that adding even such weak means of communication has very strong impact on the solvability and complexity of the Treasure Hunt problem. In particular, in the failing agents model it allows the agents to be 1-competitive w.r.t. an optimal algorithm which does not know the location of the treasure, but is instantly notified of agent failures. In the black holes model (where there is no deterministic solution for non-communicating agents even in the presence of a single black hole) we show a lower bound of 2f + 1 and an upper bound of 4f + 1 for the number of agents needed to solve Treasure Hunt in presence of up to f black holes, as well as partial results about the hunt time in the presence of few black holes.
Cite as

Stefan Dobrev, Rastislav Královic, and Dana Pardubská. Treasure Hunt with Barely Communicating Agents. In 21st International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2017). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 95, pp. 14:1-14:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2018)

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@InProceedings{dobrev_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2017.14,
  author =	{Dobrev, Stefan and Kr\'{a}lovic, Rastislav and Pardubsk\'{a}, Dana},
  title =	{{Treasure Hunt with Barely Communicating Agents}},
  booktitle =	{21st International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2017)},
  pages =	{14:1--14:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-061-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2018},
  volume =	{95},
  editor =	{Aspnes, James and Bessani, Alysson and Felber, Pascal and Leit\~{a}o, Jo\~{a}o},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2017.14},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-86346},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2017.14},
  annote =	{Keywords: parallel exhaustive search, treasure hunt, fault-tolerant search, weak coordination, black holes}
}
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