Perpetual maintenance of machines with different urgency requirements

TL;DR

This paper addresses the Bamboo Garden Trimming Problem, designing perpetual schedules for maintaining bamboo heights with minimal maximum waiting time, applicable to machine servicing with different frequencies.

Contribution

It introduces improved approximation algorithms for both discrete and continuous variants of BGT, resolving a conjecture and enhancing previous ratios.

Findings

Tighter approximation algorithms for discrete BGT.

Approximation algorithms for continuous BGT with logarithmic ratios.

Resolution of a conjecture related to the Pinwheel problem.

Abstract

A garden $G$ is populated by $n\ge 1$ bamboos $b_1, b_2, ..., b_n$ with the respective daily growth rates $h_1 \ge h_2 \ge \dots \ge h_n$. It is assumed that the initial heights of bamboos are zero. The robotic gardener maintaining the garden regularly attends bamboos and trims them to height zero according to some schedule. The Bamboo Garden Trimming Problem (BGT) is to design a perpetual schedule of cuts to maintain the elevation of the bamboo garden as low as possible. The bamboo garden is a metaphor for a collection of machines which have to be serviced, with different frequencies, by a robot which can service only one machine at a time. The objective is to design a perpetual schedule of servicing which minimizes the maximum (weighted) waiting time for servicing. We consider two variants of BGT. In discrete BGT the robot trims only one bamboo at the end of each day. In continuous BGT the bamboos can be cut at any time, however, the robot needs time to move from one bamboo to the next. For discrete BGT, we show tighter approximation algorithms for the case when the growth rates are balanced and for the general case. The former algorithm settles one of the conjectures about the Pinwheel problem. The general approximation algorithm improves on the previous best approximation ratio. For continuous BGT, we propose approximation algorithms which achieve approximation ratios $O(\log \lceil h_1/h_n\rceil)$ and $O(\log n)$.