Publication

P. Surynek. Recent Progress in Compilation-Based Approaches for Multi-Agent Path Finding. In International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART), 2026.

Abstract: Multi-Agent pathfinding (MAPF) is a fundamental enabler of application successes of warehouse logistics. The task in the standard MAPF is to find discrete paths through which agents can navigate themselves from their starting positions to individual goal positions without collisions. The requirement to generate optimal paths with respect to various objectives such as makespan or sum of costs makes the problem computationally challenging. Two major approaches to optimal MAPF solving include dedicated search-based methods, and compilation-based methods that reduce a MAPF instance to an instance in a different formalism, for which an efficient solver exists. In this position paper, we summarize main ideas behind compilation-based solvers for MAPF using SAT and MILP formalisms. Although currently the dedicated solvers dominate in MAPF, we believe that ideas from compilation approaches are still relevant, and we will explain why we believe so.

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