IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/oropre/v50y2002i5p772-795.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rendezvous Search: A Personal Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Steve Alpern

    (Department of Mathematics, The London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom)

Abstract

The rendezvous-search problem was posed by the author 25 years ago. In its basic form, it asks how two unit speed players can find each other in least expected time, when randomly placed in a known dark region. The problem received little attention until about 10 years ago. This article surveys the rapid progress that has been made since then, and also presents some new results.

Suggested Citation

  • Steve Alpern, 2002. "Rendezvous Search: A Personal Perspective," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 50(5), pages 772-795, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:50:y:2002:i:5:p:772-795
    DOI: 10.1287/opre.50.5.772.363
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.50.5.772.363
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/opre.50.5.772.363?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wei Shi Lim & Steve Alpern & Anatole Beck, 1997. "Rendezvous Search on the Line with More Than Two Players," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 45(3), pages 357-364, June.
    2. R. D. Foley & T. P. Hill & M. C. Spruill, 1991. "Linear search with bounded resources," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(4), pages 555-565, August.
    3. Steve Alpern & Anatole Beck, 1999. "Asymmetric Rendezvous on the Line Is a Double Linear Search Problem," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 24(3), pages 604-618, August.
    4. Vic Baston, 1999. "Note: Two rendezvous search problems on the line," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(3), pages 335-340, April.
    5. Steve Alpern, 2002. "Rendezvous search on labeled networks," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(3), pages 256-274, April.
    6. Sugden, Robert, 1995. "A Theory of Focal Points," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(430), pages 533-550, May.
    7. Steve Alpern & Anatole Beck, 1999. "Rendezvous Search on the Line with Limited Resources: Maximizing the Probability of Meeting," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 47(6), pages 849-861, December.
    8. Shmuel Gal, 1999. "Rendezvous Search on the Line," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 47(6), pages 974-976, December.
    9. J. V. Howard, 1999. "Rendezvous Search on the Interval and the Circle," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 47(4), pages 550-558, August.
    10. Edward J. Anderson & Sándor P. Fekete, 2001. "Two Dimensional Rendezvous Search," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 49(1), pages 107-118, February.
    11. Alpern, Steve & Beck, Anatole, 1997. "Rendezvous search on the line with bounded resources: expected time minimization," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 588-597, September.
    12. Stanley J. Benkoski & Michael G. Monticino & James R. Weisinger, 1991. "A survey of the search theory literature," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(4), pages 469-494, August.
    13. Crawford, Vincent P & Haller, Hans, 1990. "Learning How to Cooperate: Optimal Play in Repeated Coordination Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(3), pages 571-595, May.
    14. Steve Alpern & Anatole Beck, 2000. "Pure Strategy Asymmetric Rendezvous on the Line with an Unknown Initial Distance," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 48(3), pages 498-501, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Steve Alpern & Thomas Lidbetter, 2014. "Searching a Variable Speed Network," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 39(3), pages 697-711, August.
    2. Steve Alpern, 2017. "Hide-and-Seek Games on a Network, Using Combinatorial Search Paths," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 65(5), pages 1207-1214, October.
    3. Steve Alpern & Li Zeng, 2022. "Social Distancing, Gathering, Search Games: Mobile Agents on Simple Networks," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 288-311, March.
    4. Leone, Pierre & Buwaya, Julia & Alpern, Steve, 2022. "Search-and-rescue rendezvous," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 297(2), pages 579-591.
    5. Richard Weber, 2012. "Strategy for Quickest Second Meeting of Two Agents in Two Locations," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 37(1), pages 123-128, February.
    6. Andreas Blume & April Mitchell Franco & Paul Heidhues, 2021. "Dynamic coordination via organizational routines," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 72(4), pages 1001-1047, November.
    7. Steve Alpern & Thomas Lidbetter, 2013. "Mining Coal or Finding Terrorists: The Expanding Search Paradigm," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 61(2), pages 265-279, April.
    8. Richard Weber, 2012. "Optimal Symmetric Rendezvous Search on Three Locations," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 37(1), pages 111-122, February.
    9. Alpern, Steve & Katrantzi, Ioanna, 2009. "Equilibria of two-sided matching games with common preferences," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 196(3), pages 1214-1222, August.
    10. Alpern, Steve, 2008. "Line-of-sight rendezvous," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 188(3), pages 865-883, August.
    11. Pierre Leone & Steve Alpern, 2018. "Rendezvous search with markers that can be dropped at chosen times," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(6-7), pages 449-461, September.
    12. Qiaoming Han & Donglei Du & Juan Vera & Luis F. Zuluaga, 2008. "Improved Bounds for the Symmetric Rendezvous Value on the Line," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 56(3), pages 772-782, June.
    13. Steve Alpern, 2011. "Find-and-Fetch Search on a Tree," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 59(5), pages 1258-1268, October.
    14. Alpern, Steve & Baston, Vic, 2006. "A common notion of clockwise can help in planar rendezvous," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 175(2), pages 688-706, December.
    15. Blume, Andreas, 2018. "Failure of common knowledge of language in common-interest communication games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 132-155.
    16. Oléron Evans, Thomas P. & Bishop, Steven R., 2013. "Static search games played over graphs and general metric spaces," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 231(3), pages 667-689.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Leone, Pierre & Buwaya, Julia & Alpern, Steve, 2022. "Search-and-rescue rendezvous," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 297(2), pages 579-591.
    2. Pierre Leone & Steve Alpern, 2018. "Rendezvous search with markers that can be dropped at chosen times," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(6-7), pages 449-461, September.
    3. Pierre Leone & Steve Alpern, 2022. "A Symbolic Programming Approach to the Rendezvous Search Problem," SN Operations Research Forum, Springer, vol. 3(1), pages 1-29, March.
    4. Steve Alpern & Wei Shi Lim, 2002. "Rendezvous of three agents on the line," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(3), pages 244-255, April.
    5. Edward J. Anderson & Sándor P. Fekete, 2001. "Two Dimensional Rendezvous Search," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 49(1), pages 107-118, February.
    6. Steve Alpern & Anatole Beck, 1999. "Rendezvous Search on the Line with Limited Resources: Maximizing the Probability of Meeting," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 47(6), pages 849-861, December.
    7. Alpern, Steve, 2008. "Line-of-sight rendezvous," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 188(3), pages 865-883, August.
    8. Steve Alpern & Vic Baston, 2005. "Rendezvous on a Planar Lattice," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 53(6), pages 996-1006, December.
    9. Vic Baston & Shmuel Gal, 2001. "Rendezvous search when marks are left at the starting points," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(8), pages 722-731, December.
    10. Cheng-Shang Chang & Wanjiun Liao & Ching-Min Lien, 2015. "On the Multichannel Rendezvous Problem: Fundamental Limits, Optimal Hopping Sequences, and Bounded Time-to-Rendezvous," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 40(1), pages 1-23, February.
    11. Steve Alpern & Anatole Beck, 2000. "Pure Strategy Asymmetric Rendezvous on the Line with an Unknown Initial Distance," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 48(3), pages 498-501, June.
    12. Steve Alpern, 2002. "Rendezvous search on labeled networks," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(3), pages 256-274, April.
    13. Qiaoming Han & Donglei Du & Juan Vera & Luis F. Zuluaga, 2008. "Improved Bounds for the Symmetric Rendezvous Value on the Line," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 56(3), pages 772-782, June.
    14. Alpern, Steve & Baston, Vic, 2006. "A common notion of clockwise can help in planar rendezvous," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 175(2), pages 688-706, December.
    15. Steve Alpern & Li Zeng, 2022. "Social Distancing, Gathering, Search Games: Mobile Agents on Simple Networks," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 288-311, March.
    16. Steve Alpern, 2017. "Hide-and-Seek Games on a Network, Using Combinatorial Search Paths," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 65(5), pages 1207-1214, October.
    17. Bosch-Domènech, Antoni & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2013. "On the role of non-equilibrium focal points as coordination devices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 52-67.
    18. J. V. Howard & Marco Timmer, 2013. "New results on rendezvous search on the interval," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 60(6), pages 454-467, September.
    19. Alós-Ferrer, Carlos & Kuzmics, Christoph, 2013. "Hidden symmetries and focal points," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(1), pages 226-258.
    20. Nicolas Bardsley & Judith Mehta & Chris Starmer & Robert Sugden, 2006. "The Nature of Salience Revisited: Cognitive Hierarchy Theory versus Team Reasoning," Discussion Papers 2006-17, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:50:y:2002:i:5:p:772-795. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.