arXiv AI

Pivot-and-Station Multi-Agent Path Finding: Solvability, Complexity, and Algorithms

The paper introduces Pivot-and-Station Multi-Agent Path Finding (PS‑MAPF), a variant of MAPF where a subset of agents must visit interchangeable pivots before all agents occupy anonymous stations. It provides a full solvability characterization: every instance on a 2‑edge‑connected graph is solvable, and for arbitrary connected graphs a structural effective‑distance measure relative to unoccupied vertices gives a necessary and sufficient condition. The authors prove that minimizing station‑makespan or station‑flowtime is NP‑hard even with a single pivot, and present three algorithms—a complete baseline, a SAT‑based optimal solver, and Pivot‑Prioritized Planning (PPP), which solves 74‑89% of benchmark instances with significantly lower makespan and flowtime than the baseline.

arXiv AI
Aug 24

Unified Branch-and-Bound Search for the Steiner Traveling Salesman Problem on Graphs of Convex Sets

The paper introduces a unified branch‑and‑bound framework for the Steiner Traveling Salesman Problem on Graphs of Convex Sets (GCS), where the goal is to find a minimum‑cost closed walk through required convex sets while allowing optional vertices and revisits. The method uses additive lower‑bound graph costs for committed prefixes and a cut‑separated connected‑flow relaxation for the remaining cost, guaranteeing finite termination under a uniform positive‑cost assumption. Experiments on benchmark instances show that both best‑first and depth‑first traversal strategies find feasible solutions within 30 seconds, achieving mean certified optimality gaps of 28.1% and 29.7% respectively, outperforming two recent baselines.

By Jingtao Tang, Hang Ma
arXiv AI
Aug 19

A Theoretical Framework for Parallel Lifelong MAPF Using Group Decentralized Planning

The paper presents a theoretical analysis of the Rolling‑Horizon Collision Resolution (RHCR) framework for Lifelong Multi‑Agent Path Finding (L‑MAPF), proving its near‑optimality in a discounted MDP setting. Building on this, the authors introduce Group Decentralized RHCR (GD‑RHCR), which partitions agents via a transitive communication scheme and plans each partition in parallel, achieving similar optimality guarantees while reducing per‑plan computational cost. Experiments across various maps demonstrate that GD‑RHCR scales to higher agent counts with high throughput and lower cost compared to vanilla RHCR.

By Alex DeWeese, Jiaoyang Li, Guannan Qu