How to gather asynchronous oblivious robots on anonymous rings

A set of robots arbitrarily placed on the nodes of an anonymous graph have to meet at one common node and remain in there. This problem is known in the literature as the \emph{gathering}. Robots operate in Look-Compute-Move cycles; in one cycle, a robot takes a snapshot of the current configuration (Look), decides whether to stay idle or to move to one of its neighbors (Compute), and in the latter case makes the computed move instantaneously (Move). Cycles are performed asynchronously for each robot. Moreover, each robot is empowered by the so called \emph{multiplicity detection} capability, that is, a robot is able to detect during its Look operation whether a node is empty, or occupied by one robot, or occupied by an undefined number of robots greater than one. The described problem has been extensively studied during the last years. However, the known solutions work only for specific initial configurations and leave some open cases. In this paper, we provide an algorithm which solves the general problem, and is able to detect all the non-gatherable configurations. It is worth noting that our new algorithm makes use of a unified and general strategy for any initial configuration.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Source https://inria.hal.science/hal-00697132
Author d'Angelo, Gianlorenzo, Di Stefano, Gabriele, Navarra, Alfredo
Maintainer CCSD
Last Updated May 18, 2026, 22:28 (UTC)
Created May 18, 2026, 22:28 (UTC)
Identifier Report N°: RR-7963
Language en
Rights https://about.hal.science/hal-authorisation-v1/
contributor Algorithms, simulation, combinatorics and optimization for telecommunications (MASCOTTE) ; Centre Inria d'Université Côte d'Azur ; Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-COMmunications, Réseaux, systèmes Embarqués et Distribués (Laboratoire I3S - COMRED) ; Laboratoire d'Informatique, Signaux, et Systèmes de Sophia Antipolis (I3S) ; Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) (UNS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Côte d'Azur (UniCA)-Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) (UNS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Côte d'Azur (UniCA)-Laboratoire d'Informatique, Signaux, et Systèmes de Sophia Antipolis (I3S) ; Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) (UNS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Côte d'Azur (UniCA)-Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) (UNS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Côte d'Azur (UniCA)
creator d'Angelo, Gianlorenzo
date 2012-05-14T00:00:00
harvest_object_id 8a3fb63d-7124-4b7e-8e8c-1bb1c60a30ec
harvest_source_id 3374d638-d20b-4672-ba96-a23232d55657
harvest_source_title test moissonnage SELUNE
metadata_modified 2025-10-07T00:00:00
set_spec type:REPORT