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Exact Approaches to the Multi-agent Collective Construction Problem

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Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 12333))

Abstract

The multi-agent collective construction problem tasks agents to construct any given three-dimensional structure on a grid by repositioning blocks. Agents are required to also use the blocks to build ramps in order to access the higher levels necessary to construct the building, and then remove the ramps upon completion of the building. This paper presents a mixed integer linear programming model and a constraint programming model of the problem, either of which can exactly optimize the problem, as previous efforts have only considered heuristic approaches. The two models are evaluated on several small instances with a large number of agents. The plans clearly show the swarm behavior of the agents. The mixed integer linear programming model is able to find optimal solutions faster than the constraint programming model and even some existing incomplete methods due to its highly-exploitable network flow substructures.

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Notes

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Acknowledgments

The research at the University of Southern California was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant numbers 1724392, 1409987, 1817189, 1837779, and 1935712.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Edward Lam & Peter J. Stuckey

  2. CSIRO Data61, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Edward Lam

  3. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Sven Koenig & T. K. Satish Kumar

Authors
  1. Edward Lam
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  2. Peter J. Stuckey
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  3. Sven Koenig
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  4. T. K. Satish Kumar
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Edward Lam .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Insight Centre for Data Analytics, School for Computer Science and Information Technology, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

    Helmut Simonis

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Lam, E., Stuckey, P.J., Koenig, S., Kumar, T.K.S. (2020). Exact Approaches to the Multi-agent Collective Construction Problem. In: Simonis, H. (eds) Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming. CP 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12333. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58475-7_43

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58475-7_43

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-58474-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-58475-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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