title: Binary search is not efficient with traversal costs. What is?
body: <p>Binary search let me down when I tried to apply it to the real world. The scenario is as follows.  </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>I need to test the range of a device that communicates over radio.
    Communication needs to occur quickly, but slow transmission is
    tolerable, up to a point (say, about 3 minutes). I need to test
    whether transmissions will be successful every 200 feet until failure, up to 1600
    feet. Every 200 feet a test will be run which requires 3 minutes to
    execute.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I naively assumed that a binary search would be the most efficient method of finding the failure point, but consider a travel speed of 200 ft/min and test time of 3 minutes. If failure to transmit occurs at 500 feet, binary search is not the most efficient means of finding the failure point, as shown below.</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/8XFOD.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p>Simply walking along and testing every single point would have found the solution sooner, taking only 12 minutes, whereas binary search &amp; testing would take 16 minutes.</p>
  
  <p>My question: How do you calculate the most efficient path to the solution when traveling time matters? What is this called (e.g., binary-travel search, etc.)?</p>