Computational Power of a Single Oblivious Mobile Agent in Two-Edge-Connected Graphs

TL;DR

This paper explores whether oblivious and one-bit memory mobile agents have equivalent computational power in 2-edge-connected graphs, showing that graph topology, specifically bridge edges, determines their difference in capability.

Contribution

The study demonstrates that in 2-edge-connected graphs, oblivious agents can simulate one-bit memory agents with polynomial time overhead, linking graph structure to agent computational power.

Findings

Oblivious agents can simulate one-bit memory agents with polynomial overhead.

Graph topology, especially the presence of bridge edges, determines the difference in computational power.

In 2-edge-connected graphs, oblivious and one-bit memory agents are computationally equivalent under certain conditions.

Abstract

We investigated the computational power of a single mobile agent in an $n$-node graph with storage (i.e., node memory). Generally, a system with one-bit agent memory and $O(1)$-bit storage is as powerful as that with $O(n)$-bit agent memory and $O(1)$-bit storage. Thus, we focus on the difference between one-bit memory and oblivious (i.e., zero-bit memory) agents. Although their computational powers are not equivalent, all the known results exhibiting such a difference rely on the fact that oblivious agents cannot transfer any information from one side to the other across the bridge edge. Hence, our main question is as follows: Are the computational powers of one-bit memory and oblivious agents equivalent in 2-edge-connected graphs or not? The main contribution of this study is to answer this question under the relaxed assumption that each node has $O(\log\Delta)$-bit storage (where $\Delta$ is the maximum degree of the graph). We present an algorithm for simulating any algorithm for a single one-bit memory agent using an oblivious agent with $O(n^2)$-time overhead per round. Our results imply that the topological structure of graphs differentiating the computational powers of oblivious and non-oblivious agents is completely characterized by the existence of bridge edges.