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Searching for an Agent Who May OR May Not Want to be Found

Department of Mathematics, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom
Department of Statistics, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel
s.alpern{at}lse.ac.uk
s.gal{at}stat.haifa.ac.il

There is an extensive theory regarding optimal continuous path search for a mobile or immobile "target." The traditional theory assumes that the target is one of three types: (i) an object with a known distribution of paths, (ii) a mobile or immobile hider who wants to avoid or delay capture, or (iii) a rendezvouser who wants to find the searcher. This paper introduces a new type of search problem by assuming that aims of the target are not known to the searcher. The target may be either a type (iii) cooperator (with a known cooperation probability c) or a type (ii) evader. This formulation models search problems like that for a lost teenager who may be a "runaway," or a lost intelligence agent who may be a defector. In any given search context, it produces a continuum of search problems (c), 0 c 1, linking a zero-sum searchgame (with c = 0) to a rendezvous problem (with c = 1). These models thus provide a theoretical bridge between two previously distinct parts of search theory, namely searchgames and rendezvous search.

Subject classifications: Search and surveillance: search for agent of unknown aims.
History: Received November 1999; revision received February 2000; revision received February 2000; revision received August 2000; accepted September 2000.