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  • Bidirectional Temporal Plan Graph: Enabling Switchable Passing Orders for More Efficient Multi-Agent Path Finding Plan Execution

This content will become publicly available on March 25, 2025

Title: Bidirectional Temporal Plan Graph: Enabling Switchable Passing Orders for More Efficient Multi-Agent Path Finding Plan Execution

The Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) problem involves planning collision-free paths for multiple agents in a shared environment. The majority of MAPF solvers rely on the assumption that an agent can arrive at a specific location at a specific timestep. However, real-world execution uncertainties can cause agents to deviate from this assumption, leading to collisions and deadlocks. Prior research solves this problem by having agents follow a Temporal Plan Graph (TPG), enforcing a consistent passing order at every location as defined in the MAPF plan. However, we show that TPGs are overly strict because, in some circumstances, satisfying the passing order requires agents to wait unnecessarily, leading to longer execution time. To overcome this issue, we introduce a new graphical representation called a Bidirectional Temporal Plan Graph (BTPG), which allows switching passing orders during execution to avoid unnecessary waiting time. We design two anytime algorithms for constructing a BTPG: BTPG-naïve and BTPG-optimized. Experimental results show that following BTPGs consistently outperforms following TPGs, reducing unnecessary waits by 8-20%.

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Award ID(s):
2328671
PAR ID:
10520462
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Publisher / Repository:
AAAI
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Volume:
38
Issue:
16
ISSN:
2159-5399
Page Range / eLocation ID:
17559 to 17566
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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