On the Optimality of Spiral Search

Searching for a point in the plane is a well-known search game problem introduced in the early eigthies. The best known search strategy is given by a spiral and achieves a competitive ratio of 17.289.. . It was shown by Gal [7] that this strategy is the best strategy among all monotone and periodic strategies. Since then it was unknown whether the given strategy is optimal in general. This paper settles this old open problem and shows that spiral search is indeed optimal.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: SODA
• Authors: Elmar Langetepe
• Keywords: Discrete Algorithms, Search Game Problem, Search Strategy, SODA 2010, Spiral Search