Rendezvous Search on the Labeled Line

Elizabeth J. Chester () and Reha H. Tütüncü ()
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Elizabeth J. Chester: Department of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720
Reha H. Tütüncü: Department of Mathematical Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

Operations Research, 2004, vol. 52, issue 2, 330-334

Abstract: The rendezvous search problem is the problem of finding optimal search strategies for two people who are placed randomly on a known search region and want to meet each other in minimal expected time. We focus on initial location distributions that are centrally symmetric and nonincreasing as one moves away from the center, including the discretized and/or truncated Gaussian densities. When the search region is a discrete or a continuous interval, and the interval is labeled so that the searchers know their own location at all times, we prove that the optimal strategy for both searchers is to go directly to the center and wait there. The same result also holds for rendezvous search on the infinite line.

Keywords: military; search/surveillance: rendezvous search on the discrete and continuous intervals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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