PhD ThesisThis thesis presents a new approach to obtaining optimal and complete solutions to
Multi Agent Path Finding (MAPF) problems called Collaborative Iterative Search (CIS).
CIS employs a conflict based scheme inspired by the Conflict Based Search (CBS)
algorithm and extends this to include a linear order lower level search. The structure of
Planar Graphs is leveraged, permitting further optimization of the algorithm. This takes
the form of reasoning-based culling of the search space, while maintaining optimality
and completeness. Benchmarks provided demonstrate significant performance gains
over the existing state of the art, particularly in the case of sparsely populated maps.
The thesis draws to a conclusion with a summary of proposed future work
