The rendezvous dilemma can be formulated in this way:
If they both choose to wait, of course, they will never meet. If they both choose to walk there are chances that they meet and chances that they do not. If one chooses to wait and the other chooses to walk, then there is a theoretical certainty that they will meet eventually; in practice, though, it may take too long for it to be guaranteed. The question posed, then, is: what strategies should they choose to maximize their probability of meeting?
Examples of this class of problems are known as rendezvous problems.
As well as being problems of theoretical interest, rendezvous problems include real-world problems with applications in the fields of synchronization, operating system design, operations research, and even search and rescue operations planning.