When Agents Break Down in Multiagent Path Finding

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Fioravantes, Foivos, Knop, Dušan, Melissinos, Nikolaos, Opler, Michal
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Fioravantes, Foivos
Knop, Dušan
Melissinos, Nikolaos
Opler, Michal
author_facet Fioravantes, Foivos
Knop, Dušan
Melissinos, Nikolaos
Opler, Michal
contents In Multiagent Path Finding (MAPF), the goal is to compute efficient, collision-free paths for multiple agents navigating a network from their sources to targets, minimizing the schedule's makespan-the total time until all agents reach their destinations. We introduce a new variant that formally models scenarios where some agents may experience delays due to malfunctions, posing significant challenges for maintaining optimal schedules. Recomputing an entirely new schedule from scratch after each malfunction is often computationally infeasible. To address this, we propose a framework for dynamic schedule adaptation that does not rely on full replanning. Instead, we develop protocols enabling agents to locally coordinate and adjust their paths on the fly. We prove that following our primary communication protocol, the increase in makespan after k malfunctions is bounded by k additional turns, effectively limiting the impact of malfunctions on overall efficiency. Moreover, recognizing that agents may have limited computational capabilities, we also present a secondary protocol that shifts the necessary computations onto the network's nodes, ensuring robustness without requiring enhanced agent processing power. Our results demonstrate that these protocols provide a practical, scalable approach to resilient multiagent navigation in the face of agent failures.
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spellingShingle When Agents Break Down in Multiagent Path Finding
Fioravantes, Foivos
Knop, Dušan
Melissinos, Nikolaos
Opler, Michal
Multiagent Systems
Artificial Intelligence
In Multiagent Path Finding (MAPF), the goal is to compute efficient, collision-free paths for multiple agents navigating a network from their sources to targets, minimizing the schedule's makespan-the total time until all agents reach their destinations. We introduce a new variant that formally models scenarios where some agents may experience delays due to malfunctions, posing significant challenges for maintaining optimal schedules. Recomputing an entirely new schedule from scratch after each malfunction is often computationally infeasible. To address this, we propose a framework for dynamic schedule adaptation that does not rely on full replanning. Instead, we develop protocols enabling agents to locally coordinate and adjust their paths on the fly. We prove that following our primary communication protocol, the increase in makespan after k malfunctions is bounded by k additional turns, effectively limiting the impact of malfunctions on overall efficiency. Moreover, recognizing that agents may have limited computational capabilities, we also present a secondary protocol that shifts the necessary computations onto the network's nodes, ensuring robustness without requiring enhanced agent processing power. Our results demonstrate that these protocols provide a practical, scalable approach to resilient multiagent navigation in the face of agent failures.
title When Agents Break Down in Multiagent Path Finding
topic Multiagent Systems
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.03777