Multi-Agent Pathfinding for Indoor Quadcopters: A Platform for Testing Planning-Acting Loop

Matouš Kulhan, Pavel Surynek

2023

Abstract

We study the planning-acting loop for multi-agent path finding with continuous time (MAPF R ). The standard MAPF is a problem of navigating agents from their start positions to specified individual goal positions so that agents do not collide with each other. The standard MAPF takes place in a discrete graph with agents located in its vertices and instantaneous moves of agents across edges. MAPFR adds continuous elements to MAPF via allowing agents to wait in a vertex for arbitrary length of time to avoid the collision. We focus in this paper on executing MAPFR plans with a group of Crazyflies, small indoor quadcopters. We show how to modify the existing continuous-time conflict-based search algorithm (CCBS) for MAPF R to produce plans that are suitable for execution with the quadcopters. Our platform can be used for testing suitability of variants of MAPF for execution with real agents. Our finding is that the MAPF variant with continuous time and the related CCBS algorithm allows for extensions that can produce safe plans for quadcopters, namely cylindrical protection zone around each quadcopter can be introduced at the planning level.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Kulhan M. and Surynek P. (2023). Multi-Agent Pathfinding for Indoor Quadcopters: A Platform for Testing Planning-Acting Loop. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 1: ICINCO; ISBN 978-989-758-670-5, SciTePress, pages 221-228. DOI: 10.5220/0012188200003543

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icinco23,
author={Matouš Kulhan and Pavel Surynek},
title={Multi-Agent Pathfinding for Indoor Quadcopters: A Platform for Testing Planning-Acting Loop},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 1: ICINCO},
year={2023},
pages={221-228},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012188200003543},
isbn={978-989-758-670-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 1: ICINCO
TI - Multi-Agent Pathfinding for Indoor Quadcopters: A Platform for Testing Planning-Acting Loop
SN - 978-989-758-670-5
AU - Kulhan M.
AU - Surynek P.
PY - 2023
SP - 221
EP - 228
DO - 10.5220/0012188200003543
PB - SciTePress