Multi-Agent Pathfinding with Continuous Time

MAPF is the problem of finding paths for multiple agents such that every agent reaches its goal and the agents do not collide. Most prior work on MAPF were on grid, assumed all actions cost the same, agents do not have a volume, and considered discrete time steps. In this work we propose a MAPF algorithm that do not assume any of these assumptions, is complete, and provides provably optimal solutions. This algorithm is based on a novel combination of SIPP, a continuous time single agent planning algorithms, and CBS, a state of the art multi-agent pathfinding algorithm. We analyze this algorithm, discuss its pros and cons, and evaluate it experimentally on several standard benchmarks.

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