Multi-Agent Path Finding under Limited Communication Range Constraint via Dynamic Leading

Abstract: This paper proposes a novel framework to handle a multi-agent path finding problem under a limited communication range constraint, where all agents must have a connected communication channel to the rest of the team. Many existing approaches to multi-agent path finding (e.g., leader-follower platooning) overcome computational challenges of planning in this domain by planning one agent at a time in a fixed order. However, fixed leader-follower approaches can become stuck during planning, limiting their practical utility in dense-clutter environments. To overcome this limitation, we develop dynamic leading multi-agent path finding, which allows for dynamic reselection of the leading agent during path planning whenever progress cannot be made. The experiments show the efficiency of our framework, which can handle up to 25 agents with more than 90% success-rate across five environment types where baselines routinely fail.