English

Approximating the position of a hidden agent in a graph

Combinatorics 2018-05-14 v1

Abstract

A cat and mouse play a pursuit and evasion game on a connected graph GG with nn vertices. The mouse moves to vertices m1,m2,m_1,m_2,\dots of GG where mim_i is in the closed neighbourhood of mi1m_{i-1} for i2i\geq2. The cat tests vertices c1,c2,c_1,c_2,\dots of GG without restriction and is told whether the distance between cic_i and mim_i is at most the distance between ci1c_{i-1} and mi1m_{i-1}. The mouse knows the cat's strategy, but the cat does not know the mouse's strategy. We will show that the cat can determine the position of the mouse up to distance O(n)O(\sqrt{n}) within finite time and that this bound is tight up to a constant factor. This disproves a conjecture of Dayanikli and Rautenbach.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1805.04386,
  title  = {Approximating the position of a hidden agent in a graph},
  author = {Hannah Guggiari and Alexander Roberts and Alex Scott},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.04386},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

13 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:52:00.482Z