arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Georgios Konstantinidis.
In this paper we study the two-player generalized Cops and Robber (GCR) games introduced by Bonato and MacGillivray. Our main goal is to present a full, self-contained game theoretic analysis of such games.
Several variants of the cops and robbers (CR) game have been studied in the past. In this paper we examine a novel variant, which is played between two cops, each one independently trying to catch a "passive robber". We will call this the Selfish Cops and Passive Robber {SCPR} game. In short, SCPR is a stochastic two-player, zero-sum game where the opponents are the two cop players. We study sequential and concurrent versions of the SCPR game. For both cases we prove the existence of value and optimal strategies and present algorithms for the computation of these.
In this paper we study the concurrent cops and robber (CCCR) game. CCCR follows the same rules as the classical, turn-based game, except for the fact that the players move simultaneously. The cops' goal is to capture the robber and the concurrent cop number of a graph is defined the minimum number of cops which guarantees capture. For the variant in which it it required to capture the robber in the shortest possible time, we let time to capture be the payoff function of CCCR; the (game theoretic) value of CCCR is the optimal capture time and (cop and robber) time optimal strategies are the ones which achieve the value. In this paper we prove the following. (1) For every graph G, the concurrent cop number is equal to the "classical" cop number. (2) For every graph G, CCCR has a value, the cops have an optimal strategy and, for every epsilon>0, the robber has an epsilon-optimal strategy.
We provide a game theoretic framework for the game of cops and robbers (CR). Within this framework we study certain assumptions which underlie the concepts of optimal strategies and capture time. We also point out a connection of these concepts to early work by Zermelo and D. Konig. Finally, we discuss the relationship between CR and related pursuit games to reachability games.