Multi-agent Path Finding for Indoor Quadcopters | SpringerLink
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Abstract

We study the planning-acting loop for the multi-agent path finding problem (MAPF). 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. We focus on executing MAPF plans with a group of Crazyflies, small indoor quadcopters, for which we developed a platform that integrates decision theoretic planning and plan execution modules. Our platform can be used for testing suitability of variants of MAPF for execution with real agents. We show how to modify the existing continuous-time conflict-based search algorithm (CCBS) to produce plans that are suitable for execution with the quadcopters. Our finding is that the 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.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Agents cannot wait outside vertices hence once the agent starts its (linear) movement between two vertices embedded in the metric space, the agent has to finish its movement and reach the other vertex before it can wait.

  2. 2.

    The original implementation of CCBS supports 2D space with circular agents.

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Acknowledgments

This research has been supported by GAČR - the Czech Science Foundation, grant registration number 22-31346S. We would like to thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

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Correspondence to Pavel Surynek .

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Kulhan, M., Surynek, P. (2023). Multi-agent Path Finding for Indoor Quadcopters. In: Mathieu, P., Dignum, F., Novais, P., De la Prieta, F. (eds) Advances in Practical Applications of Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, and Cognitive Mimetics. The PAAMS Collection. PAAMS 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13955. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37616-0_34

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37616-0_34

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-37615-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-37616-0

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