Offline Time-Independent Multi-Agent Path Planning

TL;DR

This paper introduces OTIMAPP, a new multi-agent path planning problem where agents operate asynchronously without resource sharing, and provides solutions, complexity analysis, and robotic applications.

Contribution

It defines the OTIMAPP problem, analyzes its computational complexity, and proposes solvers suitable for distributed asynchronous multi-agent environments.

Findings

Solution conditions for OTIMAPP are established.

Computational complexity of OTIMAPP is analyzed.

Robotic applications demonstrate the practicality of the approach.

Abstract

This paper studies a novel planning problem for multiple agents that cannot share holding resources, named OTIMAPP (Offline Time-Independent Multi-Agent Path Planning). Given a graph and a set of start-goal pairs, the problem consists in assigning a path to each agent such that every agent eventually reaches their goal without blocking each other, regardless of how the agents are being scheduled at runtime. The motivation stems from the nature of distributed environments that agents take actions fully asynchronous and have no knowledge about those exact timings of other actors. We present solution conditions, computational complexity, solvers, and robotic applications.