README.md

Simulating a Robot in a Lab: A Step-by-Step Guide

Overview

This document explains a program that simulates a robot guard navigating through a lab environment. The guard follows a set of rules to move through the lab, and the program tracks its path and analyzes specific aspects of its movement.

Solution Intuition

The core concept is to simulate a robot guard that follows a simple set of rules:

1. Turn clockwise until finding a clear path
2. Move forward one step
3. Repeat

This creates a deterministic path through the lab. The challenge is divided into two parts:

1. Count unique locations visited by the guard
2. Identify obstacles that would cause the guard to get stuck in a loop if placed in the path

1. Fundamental Data Structures

Lab Representation

First, we need to represent the lab environment. The program uses a Field type to represent a 2D grid where:

• '.' represents an empty space
• '#' represents a wall/obstacle
• ^, >, v, < represent the guard's initial position and orientation

use advent2024::field::Field;
use advent2024::location::*;

pub type Lab = Field<char>;

Location and Direction

The guard's position and movement are represented using:

pub(crate) struct Guard<'a> {
    pub lab: &'a Lab,      // Reference to the lab
    pub dir: DirVector,    // Direction vector (e.g., (0,-1) for up)
    pub pos: Location      // Current position (x,y coordinates)
}

Insight: Separating the position from direction allows us to track the guard's state completely, enabling simulation of its movement according to the rules.

2. Initializing the Guard

Before simulating movement, we need to find the guard's starting position and direction:

pub fn find_guard(lab: &Lab, token: &[char]) -> Option<(Location, DirVector)> {
    lab
        .iter()
        .position(|c| token.contains(c))
        .map(|idx| {
            let loc = lab.index_to_cartesian(idx);
            (
                loc,
                lab.get(loc)
                    .map(|val|
                        match &val {'^' => (0,-1),'>' => (1,0),'v' => (0,1),'<' => (-1,0), _ => unreachable!()}
                    )
                    .unwrap()
            )
        })
}

Insight: This function searches for one of the directional characters (^, >, v, <) and converts it to a location and corresponding direction vector. The use of Option elegantly handles the possibility that no guard is found.

3. Implementing Guard Movement

The guard movement follows the right-hand rule - it keeps turning until it finds a clear path:

impl Iterator for Guard<'_> {
    type Item = (Location, DirVector);

    fn next(&mut self) -> Option<Self::Item> {
        // turn until you find a way fwd
        while let Some(&'#') = self.lab.peek(self.pos, self.dir) {
            self.dir = turn_cw(self.dir);
        }
        // move next position as long as it is within bounds
        self.pos.move_relative(self.dir)
            .filter(|&p| self.lab.within_bounds(p))
            .map(|pos| {
                self.pos = pos;
                (pos, self.dir)
            })
    }
}

Insight:

• Implementing Iterator for Guard makes the movement logic reusable and allows using all of Rust's iterator methods.
• The guard turns clockwise until finding a clear path, then moves forward one step.
• Each iteration returns both the new position and direction, which is crucial for tracking the guard's path.

4. Solving Part 1: Counting Unique Locations

For the first challenge, we need to count how many unique locations the guard visits:

let mut unique_locations = Guard{lab:&lab,pos,dir}.collect::<HashMap<_,_>>();
unique_locations.insert(pos,dir);
println!("Part 1: Guard visited {:?} unique locations - {:?}", unique_locations.len(), t.elapsed());

Insight:

• Using a HashMap to collect location → direction pairs automatically handles duplicate locations.
• We explicitly add the starting position which might not be included in the iterator.
• This approach efficiently counts unique locations without needing to track the full path sequence.

5. Solving Part 2: Finding Loop-Causing Obstacles

For the second challenge, we need to identify obstacles that would cause the guard to get stuck in a loop:

let obstacles = unique_locations
    .iter()
    .filter(|&(l, _)| {
        path.clear();
        *lab.get_mut(*l).unwrap() = '#';  // Place test obstacle
        // Simulate guard movement with the obstacle
        let in_loop = Guard{lab:&lab,pos,dir}
            .any(|(nl,nd)| {
                let in_loop = path.get(&nl).is_some_and(|&pd| nd == pd);
                path.entry(nl).or_insert(nd);
                in_loop
            });
        *lab.get_mut(*l).unwrap() = '.';  // Remove test obstacle
        in_loop
    })
    .count();

Insight:

• For each unique location visited, we temporarily place an obstacle there and rerun the simulation.
• We detect a loop by checking if the guard revisits any location from the same direction.
• This is an important distinction: revisiting a location from a different direction doesn't constitute a loop.
• The approach modifies the lab temporarily for each test, then restores it.

6. Performance Considerations

The solution uses several techniques to optimize performance:

1. Reusing the Iterator: The Guard iterator encapsulates the movement logic, making it reusable.
2. Efficient Loop Detection: Using a HashMap to track positions and directions allows O(1) lookups.
3. Space Efficiency: Only storing unique locations rather than the full path sequence.
4. Temporary Modifications: Modifying the lab in-place for obstacle testing rather than creating copies.

7. Main Program Flow

The main function orchestrates the entire process:

fn main() {
    // Load and parse the input
    let input = std::fs::read_to_string("src/bin/day6/input.txt").expect("msg");
    let mut lab = input.parse::<Lab>().expect("Field parse err");

    // Find the guard's starting position and direction
    let (pos,dir) = find_guard(&lab, &['^','>','v','<']).expect("there is no Lab Guard !!");

    // Part 1: Count unique locations
    let t = Instant::now();
    let mut unique_locations = Guard{lab:&lab,pos,dir}.collect::<HashMap<_,_>>();
    unique_locations.insert(pos,dir);
    println!("Part 1: Guard visited {:?} unique locations - {:?}", unique_locations.len(), t.elapsed());

    // Part 2: Find loop-causing obstacles
    let t = Instant::now();
    let mut path = HashMap::new();
    let obstacles = unique_locations
        .iter()
        .filter(|&(l, _)| {
            // Test logic for each potential obstacle
            // [Implementation details omitted for brevity]
        })
        .count();

    println!("Part 2: There are {:?} loop obstacles - {:?}", obstacles, t.elapsed());
}

Conclusion

This program demonstrates several important programming principles:

1. Separation of concerns: The guard logic is separate from the main program flow
2. Iterators for complex sequences: Using Rust's iterator pattern to model the guard's movement
3. Efficient data structures: Using HashMaps for quick lookups and deduplication
4. Temporary state modification: Modifying and restoring state for testing
5. Error handling: Using Option and Result types to handle potential failures gracefully
6. Performance measurement: Including timing to measure solution efficiency

The solution elegantly tackles a complex simulation problem through clear abstractions and efficient algorithms, resulting in a program that effectively models a robot's movement through a constrained environment.