# A Blind Robot Beside an Infinite Wall

Let’s think about the following problem:

Consider a wall that stretches to infinitely in both directions. There is a robot at position $$0$$ and a door at position $$p\in\mathbb Z$$ along the wall $$(p\neq 0)$$. The robot would like to get to the door, but it knows neither $$p$$, nor the direction to the door. Furthermore, the robot cannot sense or see the door unless it stands right next to it. Give a deterministic algorithm that minimizes the number of steps the robot needs to take to get to the door.

This problem quite famous in Bangladesh because of Dr. Mohammad Kaykobad, a renowned Bangladeshi computer scientist. He maintains a list of interesting problems like this one to attract high school kids into problem solving.

Dr. Kaykobad’s formulation of this problem is quite ambiguous. He simply asks how the robot should get to the door, without specifying whether the algorithm should be deterministic. It matters as we shall see.

In this article, I shall provide a deterministic algorithm that takes at most $$9|p|$$ steps for any $$p$$. I shall also prove that any deterministic algorithm will take at least $$8|p|$$ steps. I suspect this bound can be improved up to $$9|p|$$, but I didn’t have time to think much.

### My $$\leq 9|p|$$ Deterministic Algorithm

for i = 0, 1, 2, ...:
walk up to (-2)^i, but don't walk past p
if you find the door: break loop
else: get back to 0


Suppose $$p$$ is found on $$i$$-th round. Then, $$|p| > 2^{i-2}$$, otherwise $$p$$ would have been found on $$(i-2)$$-th round. Now, it is easy to see the robot takes $$2^1+\dots+2^{i}<2^{i+1}$$ steps prior to $$i$$-th round. It takes $$|p|$$ more steps to get to $$p$$. Therefore, the total number of steps is at most
$|p|+2^{i+1}=|p|+8\cdot2^{i-2}<9|p|$
As $$|p|\to\infty$$, total number of steps converges to $$9|p|$$.

(Disclaimer: Finding a $$9|p|$$ algorithm was a homework problem in my class 6.046. The algorithm and the runtime analysis shown above was part of the official solution. My algorithm was the same, but my runtime analysis was much uglier.)

### Other Deterministic Algorithms

In this section, we shall prove that any deterministic algorithm for this problem will take at least $$8|p|$$ steps.

In any algorithm, the robot has to walk some steps to the left/right, then turn back and walk some more steps, then turn again, and so on. Without loss of generality, we may assume the optimum algorithm takes first step to the right.

Consider the the optimum deterministic algorithm $$OPT$$ with minimum number of turns $$n$$. Assume that $$\{a_i\}_{i=1}^n$$ denotes the number of steps $$OPT$$ takes during the $$i$$-th turn. Define $$A_i=\sum_{j=1}^i(-1)^{j+1}a_j$$ to be the position of the robot after $$i$$ steps. Also define $$A_0=0$$. Suppose $$OPT$$ takes fewer than $$8|p|$$ steps for all $$p$$.

Claim 1: $$a_n>\cdots a_i>\cdots a_1 > 0$$ for $$n> i > 1$$.

Proof: If the robot takes $$0$$ step at any turn, we can simply ignore that turn and merge the steps of the next turn with the steps of the previous turn. Hence, $$a_1,a_i,a_n > 0$$.

Suppose $$a_{i-1}-a_{i} \ge 0$$ for some $$i$$. This means at $$i$$-th step, the robot backtracked to somewhere between $$A_{i-1}$$ and $$A_{i-2}$$. Then, at the next step, it must go past $$A_{i-1}$$, otherwise, $$(i+1)$$-th step will revisit some previously visited vertices and it can be removed by walking to $$(a_{i-1}-a_i+a_{i+1})$$ at $$i$$-th step. This is a contradiction to the minimality of $$OPT$$. Hence, we must have $$(a_{i-1}-a_i)+a_{i+1} > a_{i-1}$$. However, in this case, we can get a better algorithm by taking $$a_{i-1}-a_i+a_{i+1}$$ steps at the $$(i-1)$$-th turn, eliminating both $$a_i$$ and $$a_{i+1}$$. This is another contradiction. Hence, $$a_{i-1}-a_{i}< 0$$.

$$a_{n}> a_{n-1}$$ must be true, otherwise the $$n$$-th step is redundant.

Claim 2: $$a_i=|A_i|+|A_{i-1}|$$ for all $$i\ge 1$$. Furthermore, $$|A_{i+2}|-|A_{i}|=a_{i+2}-a_{i+1}>0$$.

Proof: Trivial to check for odd and even $$i$$. This claim also implies $$|A_{i+2}|>0$$.

Claim 3: For $$i\ge 2$$,
$\sum_{j=1}^{i}a_j=|A_{i}|+2\sum_{j=1}^{i-1}|A_j|$

Proof: Apply claim 3 for every $$a_j$$.

Claim 4: $$|A_i| \leq 2.5|A_{i-1}|$$ for $$i\ge 6$$.

Proof: Suppose $$i$$ is odd since the other case is analogous. Consider $$p= -|A_{i-1}|- 1 < A_{i-1}$$ . The robot does not find $$p$$ until at least $$(i+1)$$-th turn, since $$|A_{i-1}|>|A_{i-3}|>\cdots>|A_2|$$ (claim 2). Thus,
$\left(\sum_{j=1}^{i}a_j\right)+a_{i}+1 < 8(|A_{i-1}|+1)$
The left hand side can be thought as follows. First, the robot walks to $$A_{i}$$. After $$a_{i}$$ more steps in the opposite direction, it reaches $$A_{i-1}$$ again. Then it takes 1 more step to reach $$p$$.

Rewrite the left hand side using claim 2 and 3 to get
$1+|A_{i-1}|+2\sum_{j=1}^{i}|A_j|< 8|A_{i-1}|+8$
It simplifies to
$1+2|A_{i}|+2\sum_{j=1}^{i-2}|A_j|< 5|A_{i-1}|+8$
$\implies |A_{i}|< 2.5|A_{i-1}|+3.5-\sum_{j=1}^{i-2}|A_j|<2.5|A_{i-1}|$ The last inequality follows from the fact that $$i\ge 6$$ and $$|A_j| > 0$$. (Q.E.D)

Notice that claim 4 can be strengthened iteratively.

Claim 5: Suppose we have proven $$|A_i|\leq b|A_{i-1}|$$ for some $$b$$ and for all sufficiently large $$i$$. Let $$b’=(2.5-1/b-1/b^2)$$. We claim that $$|A_k|\le b’|A_{k-1}|$$ for all sufficiently large $$k$$.

Proof: Pick a sufficiently large $$i$$ such that $$|A_{i-2}|\leq b|A_{i-3}|$$ We proceed like in the previous proof to get
$|A_{i}|< 2.5|A_{i-1}|+3.5-\sum_{j=1}^{i-2}|A_j|\qquad(1)$
Notice that
$|A_{i-2}|+|A_{i-3}|\ge \left( \frac{1}{b}+\frac{1}{b^2} \right)|A_{i-1}|$
Since $$i$$ is sufficiently large, the right hand side of (1) is at most $(2.5-1/b-1/b^2)|A_{i-1}|=b’|A_{i-1}|$
Hence, $$|A_{i}| < b’ |A_{i-1}|$$ . (Q.E.D.)

We start with $$b=2.5$$ and repeatedly apply claim 5. We find the following values for $$b$$:

$\begin{array}{cl} \text{iter.} & b\\ 1 & 1.94\\ 2 & 1.71883\\ 3 & 1.57973\\ 4 & 1.46627\\ 5 & 1.35287\\ 6 & 1.21445\\ 7 & 0.99857 \end{array}$

We observe that $$|A_{k}|\leq .999 |A_{k-1}|$$ for all sufficiently large $$k$$. However, that’s a contradiction, since we know $$|A_{k}| > |A_{k-2}|$$. Hence, $$OPT$$ has to take at least $$8|p|$$ steps in the worst case.

### Probabilistic Algorithms

The $$8|p|$$ bound does not hold for probabilistic algorithms. In fact, it can be shown that my first algorithm takes $$7|p|$$ steps in expectation when the first step is taken in a random direction.