Surrounding robots - A localized solution for the intruder problem

In this paper we present a distributed localized algorithm for the problem, where a group of autonomous mobile robots have to capture a target by forming a circle around it. The robots do not have memory of the past (oblivious) and only use local sensing. Dedicated communication between the robots is not needed. We introduce the discrete multi-orbit target surrounding problem and present a solution for it. We prove that our solution always guarantees that the robots enclose the target and circulate around it in O(D) time, where D is the sum of distances of the robots from the target in the start configuration. We also evaluate our solution by simulations.