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arXiv AI By Andrea Di Nezza, Mihir Patel, Fabio Fagnani, Sara Bernardini

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

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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.

Machine-generated by The Flow from the publisher's headline and feed description — not written or checked by a human. The full article lives at arXiv AI.

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