Power of Finite Memory and Finite Communication Robots under Asynchronous Scheduler

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the computational capabilities of different swarm robot models with limited memory and communication under asynchronous scheduling, comparing their power and limitations.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of the computational power of STA and COM models under asynchronous schedulers, highlighting the roles of memory and communication.

Findings

STA and COM models have distinct computational powers.

Memory and explicit communication significantly influence robot capabilities under asynchrony.

The paper clarifies the relationships between various robot models and schedulers.

Abstract

In swarm robotics, a set of robots has to perform a given task with specified internal capabilities (model) and under a given adversarial scheduler. Relation between a model $M_1$ under scheduler $S_1$, and that of a model $M_2$ under scheduler $S_2$ can be of four different types: not less powerful, more powerful, equivalent and orthogonal. In literature there are four main models of robots with lights: $\mathcal{LUMI}$, where robots have the power of observing the lights of all the robots, $\mathcal{FSTA}$ , where each robot can see only its own light, $\mathcal{FCOM}$, where each robot can observe the light of all other robots except its own and $\mathcal{OBLOT}$, where the robots do not have any light. In this paper, we investigate the computational power of $\mathcal{FSTA}$ and $\mathcal{FCOM}$ model under asynchronous scheduler by comparing it with other model and scheduler combinations. Our main focus is to understand and compare the power of persistent memory and explicit communication in robots under asynchronous scheduler.