Distributed Computing by Mobile Entities : Crucial Factors

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Distributed Computing by Mobile Entities is a rich theoretical research field whose aim is to understand limitations and abilities of computational entities operating and moving in a spatial universe.***Decades of investigations by a large international community of researchers have expanded the field to cover a wide spectrum of "computational settings", both discrete and continuous. In spite of these extensive and intensive investigations, much of the basics of distributed computing by mobile entities is still unexplored leaving deep fundamental gaps in our knowledge. This knowledge gap is true even with respect to the so-called crucial factors, that is the structural properties of the entities or of the environment that can determine whether a problem is solvable or not solvable.***The importance of crucial factors such as synchronization, knowledge, memory, anonymity, and sense of direction, is an accepted fact, established by the ongoing investigations within the Distributed Computing community. However, the precise nature of the impact (how, why, when) of each crucial factor is still poorly understood and sometimes unknown. Even less understood is the interplay between different elements. Gaps in our knowledge exist even with regards to the most well-known and investigated crucial factor, the level of synchronization.***The focus of this research program is precisely on crucial factors and their interplay. The goal is to close these fundamental gaps, so to strengthen the foundations of distributed computing by mobile entities.***Although theoretical, the field and all these investigations find their inspiration and motivation in a large variety of applications, ranging from swarm robotics to mobile software agents, from mobile sensor networks to programmable particles. Hence, the results generated by this research program are likely to provide a general understanding of some of the underlying phenomena, possibly leading to applications useful in specific contexts.**