Corridor Occupancy-Based Multi-Agent Pathfinding in Topological Maps

Soohwan Song, Ki-In Na, Wonpil Yu

Abstract: This study investigates the multi-agent pathfinding (MAPF) problem in a topological map consisting only of narrow corridors. When two or more robots move in a corridor, general MAPF algorithms determine the optimal corridor entry order to plan collision-free paths. However, depending on the width of a corridor, safety problems may occur if two or more robots navigate the corridor simultaneously. To ensure the safety of robot navigation, we propose a new MAPF method that prevents more than two robots from passing in the same corridor. This method plans multi-agent paths by assigning a spatialized constraint to a corridor entrance. The constraint allows only one robot to occupy one corridor.