TY - GEN
T1 - Pruning techniques for the increasing cost tree search for optimal multi-agent path finding
AU - Sharon, Guni
AU - Stern, Roni
AU - Goldenberg, Meir
AU - Felner, Ariel
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - We address the problem of optimal path finding for multiple agents where agents must not collide and their total travel cost should be minimized. Previous work used traditional single-agent search variants of the A* algorithm. In (Sharon et al. 2011) we introduced a novel two-level search algorithm framework for this problem. The high-level searches a novel search tree called increasing cost tree (ICT). The low-level performs a goal test on each ICT node. The new framework, called ICT search (ICTS), showed to run faster than the previous state-of-the-art A* approach by up to three orders of magnitude in many cases. In this paper we focus on the lowlevel of ICTS which performs the goal test. We introduce a number of optional pruning techniques that can significantly speed up the goal test. We discuss these pruning techniques and provide supporting experimental results.
AB - We address the problem of optimal path finding for multiple agents where agents must not collide and their total travel cost should be minimized. Previous work used traditional single-agent search variants of the A* algorithm. In (Sharon et al. 2011) we introduced a novel two-level search algorithm framework for this problem. The high-level searches a novel search tree called increasing cost tree (ICT). The low-level performs a goal test on each ICT node. The new framework, called ICT search (ICTS), showed to run faster than the previous state-of-the-art A* approach by up to three orders of magnitude in many cases. In this paper we focus on the lowlevel of ICTS which performs the goal test. We introduce a number of optional pruning techniques that can significantly speed up the goal test. We discuss these pruning techniques and provide supporting experimental results.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84893355291&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84893355291
SN - 9781577355373
T3 - Proceedings of the 4th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search, SoCS 2011
SP - 150
EP - 157
BT - Proceedings of the 4th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search, SoCS 2011
T2 - 4th International Symposium on Combinatorial Search, SoCS 2011
Y2 - 15 July 2011 through 16 July 2011
ER -