Colored Multi-Agent Path Finding: Solving Approaches

Abstract

Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) deals with the problem of finding collision-free paths for a set of agents moving in a shared environment while each agent has specified its destination. Colored MAPF generalizes MAPF by defining groups of agents that share a set of destination locations. In the paper, we evaluate several approaches to optimally solve the colored MAPF problem, namely, a method based on network flows, an extended version of conflict-based search, and two models using Boolean satisfiability. We also investigate methods for obtaining lower bounds on optimal solutions based on constraint and continuous relaxation techniques.