Catching a fast robber on the grid

摘要

We study the problem of cops and robbers on the grid where the robber is allowed to move faster than the cops. It is well known that two cops are necessary and sufficient to catch the robber on any finite grid when the robber has unit speed. Here, we prove that if the speed of the robber exceeds a sufficiently large absolute constant, then the number of cops needed to catch the robber on an n x n grid is exp(Omega(log n/log log n)). (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.