Multi-Agent Pathfinding with Real-Time Heuristic Search
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Multi-agent pathfinding, namely finding collision-free paths for several agents from their given start locations to their given goal locations on a known stationary map, is an important task for non-player characters in video games. A variety of heuristic search algorithms have been developed for this task. Non-real-time algorithms, such as Flow Annotated Replanning (FAR), first find complete paths for all agents and then move the agents along these paths. However, their searches are often too expensive. Real-time algorithms have the ability to produce the next moves for all agents without finding complete paths for them and thus allow the agents to move in real time. Real-time heuristic search algorithms have so far typically been developed for single-agent pathfinding. We, on the other hand, present a real-time heuristic search algorithm for multi-agent pathfinding, called Bounded Multi-Agent A* (BMAA*), that works as follows: Every agent runs an individual real-time heuristic search that updates heuristic values assigned to locations and treats the other agents as (moving) obstacles. Agents do not coordinate with each other, in particular, they neither share their paths nor heuristic values. We show how BMAA* can be enhanced by adding FAR-style flow annotations and allowing agents to push other agents temporarily off their goal locations, when necessary. In our experiments, BMAA* has higher completion rates and lower completion times than FAR.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".