Want to Gather? No Need to Chatter!
Sébastien Bouchard, Yoann Dieudonné, Andrzej Pelc · SIAM Journal on Computing · 2020
A team of mobile agents, starting from different nodes of an unknown network, possibly at different times, have to meet at the same node and declare that they have all met. Agents have different labels which are positive integers, and move in synchronous rounds along links of the network. The above task is known as gathering and was traditionally considered under the assumption that when some agents are at the same node then they can talk, i.e., exchange currently available information. In this paper we ask the question of whether this ability of talking is needed for gathering. The answer turns out to be no.