Multi-Agent Path Finding Using Provisionally Booking Nodes for Pickup and Delivery Problems

Daiki Shimada, Yuki Miyashita, Toshiharu Sugawara

2025

Abstract

We propose an efficient method for determining subsequent movements based on temporarily generated shortest paths in the multi-agent pickup and delivery (MAPD) problem. The MAPD problem involves multiple agents (such as carrier robots) continuously performing transportation tasks in a vast environment with obstacles while avoiding collisions with other agents. Our method is an extension of the decentralized path-finding algorithms, priority inheritance with backtracking (PIBT), and can be efficient in environments with narrow one-way paths and few detours. Our method, PIBT with provisional booking (PIBT-PB), not only secures the next node as in PIBT but also provisionally books some nodes in advance based on dynamic priorities between agents to detect possible conflict earlier. Therefore, it reduces the number of “turning back” and wasted “wait-ing” actions in environments. Our experiments show that PIBT-PB is more efficient than the baselines, PIBT and windowed PIBT, and even in less restrictive environments, it performs as efficiently as PIBT.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Shimada D., Miyashita Y. and Sugawara T. (2025). Multi-Agent Path Finding Using Provisionally Booking Nodes for Pickup and Delivery Problems. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 3: ICAART; ISBN 978-989-758-737-5, SciTePress, pages 528-537. DOI: 10.5220/0013158300003890

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icaart25,
author={Daiki Shimada and Yuki Miyashita and Toshiharu Sugawara},
title={Multi-Agent Path Finding Using Provisionally Booking Nodes for Pickup and Delivery Problems},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 3: ICAART},
year={2025},
pages={528-537},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013158300003890},
isbn={978-989-758-737-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 3: ICAART
TI - Multi-Agent Path Finding Using Provisionally Booking Nodes for Pickup and Delivery Problems
SN - 978-989-758-737-5
AU - Shimada D.
AU - Miyashita Y.
AU - Sugawara T.
PY - 2025
SP - 528
EP - 537
DO - 10.5220/0013158300003890
PB - SciTePress