The Covering Canadian Traveller Problem Revisited

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the $k$-Covering Canadian Traveller Problem ($k$-CCTP), which can be seen as a variant of the Travelling Salesperson Problem. The goal of $k$-CCTP is finding the shortest tour for a traveller to visit a set of locations in a given graph and return to the origin. Crucially, unknown to the traveller, up to $k$ edges of the graph are blocked and the traveller only discovers blocked edges online at one of their respective endpoints. The currently best known upper bound for $k$-CCTP is $O(\sqrt{k})$ which was shown in [Huang and Liao, ISAAC '12]. We improve this polynomial bound to a logarithmic one by presenting a deterministic $O(\log k)$-competitive algorithm that runs in polynomial time. Further, we demonstrate the tightness of our analysis by giving a lower bound instance for our algorithm.