Chasing Small Sets Optimally Against Adaptive Adversaries
This solves a long-standing open problem in online algorithms, providing the optimal competitive ratio for a fundamental problem that generalizes several classic problems.
The paper resolves the 30-year-old gap on the competitive ratio for chasing sets of size at most k in a metric space, achieving an optimal deterministic O(2^k)-competitive algorithm, which is optimal even against adaptive adversaries. It also improves the lower bound and provides a matching upper bound for k=3.
We study deterministic online algorithms for the problem of chasing sets of cardinality at most $k$ in a metric space, also known as metrical service systems and equivalent to width-$k$ layered graph traversal. We resolve the 30-year-old gap of $Ω(2^k)\cap O(k2^k)$ on the competitive ratio of this problem by giving an $O(2^k)$-competitive deterministic algorithm. This bound is optimal even among randomized algorithms against adaptive adversaries. We also (slightly) improve the deterministic lower bound to $D_k$, defined recursively by $D_1=1$ and $D_{k+1}=2D_k+\sqrt{8+8D_k}+3$, which we conjecture to be exactly tight. For $k=3$, we provide a matching upper bound of $D_3$. Our results imply slightly improved upper and lower bounds for distributed asynchronous collective tree exploration and for the $k$-taxi problem, respectively. Our algorithm generalizes the classical doubling strategy, previously known to be optimal for $k=2$. The previous best bound for general $k$ was achieved by the generalized work function algorithm (WFA), and was known to be tight for WFA. Our improved bound therefore implies that WFA is sub-optimal for chasing small sets.