Sub-1.5 Time-Optimal Multi-Robot Path Planning on Grids in Polynomial Time
This work addresses scaling challenges in logistics applications like robotic warehouses by providing an efficient solution with provable guarantees, though it is incremental as it builds on existing methods.
The paper tackles the NP-hard problem of multi-robot path planning on grids by proposing the RTH algorithm, which achieves asymptotic optimality guarantees of 1-1.5 on makespan for random instances with up to 1/3 robot density in polynomial time, scaling to grids with 45,000 robots.
Graph-based multi-robot path planning (MRPP) is NP-hard to optimally solve. In this work, we propose the first low polynomial-time algorithm for MRPP achieving 1--1.5 asymptotic optimality guarantees on makespan for random instances under very high robot density, with high probability. The dual guarantee on computational efficiency and solution optimality suggests our proposed general method is promising in significantly scaling up multi-robot applications for logistics, e.g., at large robotic warehouses. Specifically, on an $m_1\times m_2$ gird, $m_1 \ge m_2$, our RTH (Rubik Table with Highways) algorithm computes solutions for routing up to $\frac{m_1m_2}{3}$ robots with uniformly randomly distributed start and goal configurations with a makespan of $m_1 + 2m_2 + o(m_1)$, with high probability. Because the minimum makespan for such instances is $m_1 + m_2 - o(m_1)$, also with high probability, RTH guarantees $\frac{m_1+2m_2}{m_1+m_2}$ optimality as $m_1 \to \infty$ for random instances with up to $\frac{1}{3}$ robot density, with high probability. $\frac{m_1+2m_2}{m_1+m_2} \in (1, 1.5]$. Alongside this key result, we also establish a series of related results supporting even higher robot densities and environments with regularly distributed obstacles, which directly map to real-world parcel sorting scenarios. Building on the baseline methods with provable guarantees, we have developed effective, principled heuristics that further improve the computed optimality of the RTH algorithms. In extensive numerical evaluations, RTH and its variants demonstrate exceptional scalability as compared with methods including ECBS and DDM, scaling to over $450 \times 300$ grids with $45,000$ robots, and consistently achieves makespan around $1.5$ optimal or better, as predicted by our theoretical analysis.