ITA-ECBS: A Bounded-Suboptimal Algorithm for the Combined Target-Assignment and Path-Finding Problem

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Tang, Yimin, Koenig, Sven, Li, Jiaoyang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Tang, Yimin
Koenig, Sven
Li, Jiaoyang
author_facet Tang, Yimin
Koenig, Sven
Li, Jiaoyang
contents Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF), i.e., finding collision-free paths for multiple robots, plays a critical role in many applications. Sometimes, assigning a target to each agent also presents a challenge. The Combined Target-Assignment and Path-Finding (TAPF) problem, a variant of MAPF, requires one to simultaneously assign targets to agents and plan collision-free paths for agents. Several algorithms, including CBM, CBS-TA, and ITA-CBS, optimally solve the TAPF problem, with ITA-CBS being the leading algorithm for minimizing flowtime. However, the only existing bounded-suboptimal algorithm ECBS-TA is derived from CBS-TA rather than ITA-CBS. So, it faces the same issues as CBS-TA, such as searching through multiple constraint trees and spending too much time on finding the next-best target assignment. We introduce ITA-ECBS, the first bounded-suboptimal variant of ITA-CBS. Transforming ITA-CBS to its bounded-suboptimal variant is challenging because different constraint tree nodes can have different assignments of targets to agents. ITA-ECBS uses focal search to achieve efficiency and determines target assignments based on a new lower bound matrix. We show that it runs faster than ECBS-TA in 87.42% of 54,033 test cases.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_05223
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ITA-ECBS: A Bounded-Suboptimal Algorithm for the Combined Target-Assignment and Path-Finding Problem
Tang, Yimin
Koenig, Sven
Li, Jiaoyang
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF), i.e., finding collision-free paths for multiple robots, plays a critical role in many applications. Sometimes, assigning a target to each agent also presents a challenge. The Combined Target-Assignment and Path-Finding (TAPF) problem, a variant of MAPF, requires one to simultaneously assign targets to agents and plan collision-free paths for agents. Several algorithms, including CBM, CBS-TA, and ITA-CBS, optimally solve the TAPF problem, with ITA-CBS being the leading algorithm for minimizing flowtime. However, the only existing bounded-suboptimal algorithm ECBS-TA is derived from CBS-TA rather than ITA-CBS. So, it faces the same issues as CBS-TA, such as searching through multiple constraint trees and spending too much time on finding the next-best target assignment. We introduce ITA-ECBS, the first bounded-suboptimal variant of ITA-CBS. Transforming ITA-CBS to its bounded-suboptimal variant is challenging because different constraint tree nodes can have different assignments of targets to agents. ITA-ECBS uses focal search to achieve efficiency and determines target assignments based on a new lower bound matrix. We show that it runs faster than ECBS-TA in 87.42% of 54,033 test cases.
title ITA-ECBS: A Bounded-Suboptimal Algorithm for the Combined Target-Assignment and Path-Finding Problem
topic Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.05223