[2603.18866] Conflict-Based Search for Multi Agent Path Finding with Asynchronous Actions

Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence arXiv:2603.18866 (cs) [Submitted on 19 Mar 2026 (v1), last revised 26 Mar 2026 (this version, v2)] Title:Conflict-Based Search for Multi Agent Path Finding with Asynchronous Actions Authors:Xuemian Wu, Shizhe Zhao, Zhongqiang Ren View a PDF of the paper titled Conflict-Based Search for Multi Agent Path Finding with Asynchronous Actions, by Xuemian Wu and 2 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) seeks collision-free paths for multiple agents from their respective start locations to their respective goal locations while minimizing path costs. Most existing MAPF algorithms rely on a common assumption of synchronized actions, where the actions of all agents start at the same time and always take a time unit, which may limit the use of MAPF planners in practice. To get rid of this assumption, Continuous-time Conflict-Based Search (CCBS) is a popular approach that can find optimal solutions for MAPF with asynchronous actions (MAPF-AA). However, CCBS has recently been identified to be incomplete due to an uncountably infinite state space created by continuous wait durations. This paper proposes a new method, Conflict-Based Search with Asynchronous Actions (CBS-AA), which bypasses this theoretical issue and can solve MAPF-AA with completeness and solution optimality guarantees. Based on CBS-AA, we also develop conflict resolution techniques to improve the scalability of CBS-AA further. Our test...