Scalable Mechanism Design for Multi-Agent Path Finding

Scalable Mechanism Design for Multi-Agent Path Finding

Paul Friedrich, Yulun Zhang, Michael Curry, Ludwig Dierks, Stephen McAleer, Jiaoyang Li, Tuomas Sandholm, Sven Seuken

Proceedings of the Thirty-Third International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence

Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) involves determining paths for multiple agents to travel simultaneously and collision-free through a shared area toward given goal locations. This problem is computationally complex, especially when dealing with large numbers of agents, as is common in realistic applications like autonomous vehicle coordination. Finding an optimal solution is often computationally infeasible, making the use of approximate, suboptimal algorithms essential. Adding to the complexity, agents might act in a self-interested and strategic way, possibly misrepresenting their goals to the MAPF algorithm if it benefits them. Although the field of mechanism design offers tools to align incentives, using these tools without careful consideration can fail when only having access to approximately optimal outcomes. In this work, we introduce the problem of scalable mechanism design for MAPF and propose three strategyproof mechanisms, two of which even use approximate MAPF algorithms. We test our mechanisms on realistic MAPF domains with problem sizes ranging from dozens to hundreds of agents. We find that they improve welfare beyond a simple baseline.
Keywords:
Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems: MAS: Multi-agent planning
Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: GTEP: Mechanism design
Planning and Scheduling: PS: Planning algorithms