Graph Exploration by Energy-Sharing Mobile Agents

Abstract: We consider the problem of collective exploration of a known $n$-node edge-weighted graph by $k$ mobile agents that have limited energy but are capable of energy transfers. The agents are initially placed at an arbitrary subset of nodes in the graph, and each agent has an initial, possibly different, amount of energy. The goal of the exploration problem is for every edge in the graph to be traversed by at least one agent. The amount of energy used by an agent to travel distance $x$ is proportional to $x$. In our model, the agents can {\em share} energy when co-located: when two agents meet, one can transfer part of its energy to the other. For an $n$-node path, we give an $O(n+k)$ time algorithm that either finds an exploration strategy, or reports that one does not exist. For an $n$-node tree with $\ell $ leaves, we give an $O(n+ \ell k^2)$ algorithm that finds an exploration strategy if one exists. Finally, for the general graph case, we show that the problem of deciding if exploration is possible by energy-sharing agents is NP-hard, even for 3-regular graphs. In addition, we show that it is always possible to find an exploration strategy if the total energy of the agents is at least twice the total weight of the edges; moreover, this is asymptotically optimal.