The Cow-Path Game: A competitive vehicle routing problem

This work considers multi-vehicle systems in which self-interested, mobile agents compete to capture a target that has been distributed on a ring. In the scenarios studied, agents face the added difficulty of having minimal sensing capabilities and limited knowledge of where the target is located. We consider strategic algorithms that allow agents to effectively make decisions and plan trajectories in these settings. Specifically, we characterize equilibria strategies for a search game in which two cows compete to find a patch of clover located somewhere on the unit ring. Throughout, we motivate the work using the example of taxi drivers that compete with one another to garner fares in a busy urban landscape.