Games of Pursuit and Evasion

Pursuit-Evasion games typically involve two types of players: those in pursuit (aka cops) and the so-called evaders (aka robbers). The backdrop is usually a network with specific rules that dictate how the players can move. These are turn-based games, and one is usually interested in knowing whether and how the evaders can be cornered. We often want to do this as inexpensively and quickly as we can, which leads to questions about optimizing the number of cops we deploy and the number of rounds that the game will last. It turns out that answers to these questions often have deep connections with the structure of the underlying network. This talk will involve a few glimpses of such connections. We will also discuss how these games can model real-world situations.