Abstract. One of the main appeals of mobile sensors is the variety of environments in which they can operate as an autonomous network. Different environments, however, present different challenges, especially in terms of inter-sensor communication. In sparse environments, it may not be possible to maintain full connectivity at all times, setting off the need for agents to communicate opportunistically when they are close to each other. This, in turn, suggests that communication needs be taken into account in the design of agents' trajectories. In this paper, we introduce a notion of tour and meeting point as an abstraction of trajectories designed for both sensing and communication, and we study the tradeoffs involved between motion to sense and sample and motion to communicate and interact.