From Classical to Colored Multi-Agent Path Finding

Abstract

Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) deals with the problem of finding collision-free paths for a set of agents moving in a shared environment, while each agent has specified its own destination. Colored MAPF generalizes MAPF by defining groups of agents that share a set of destination locations. In the paper, we evaluate several approaches to optimally solve colored MAPF problem, namely, a method based on network flows, an extended version of conflict-based search, and two models using Boolean satisfiability. We also investigate methods for obtaining lower bounds on optimal solutions based on constraint and continuous relaxation techniques.

Improved Anonymous Multi-Agent Path Finding Algorithm

“…More involved variants of AMAPF were studied in (Ma and Koenig 2016;Barták, Ivanová, and Švancara 2021). It was assumed that the agents are partitioned into the teams (colors) and each team is assigned a set of interchangeable targets (of the same color).…”

“…In (Ma and Koenig 2016), a combination of CBS and min-cost max-flow algorithm (Ford Jr and Fulkerson 2015) was suggested to solve this Colored MAPF problem. Barták, Ivanová, and Švancara (2021) proposed several solvers that utilize reduction to SAT. Indeed, AMAPF can be viewed as a special instantiation of the Colored MAPF problem (i.e.…”