Virtual Force-Based Routing of Modular Agents on a Graph

Modular vehicles present a novel area of academic and industrial interest in the field of multi-agent systems. Modularity allows vehicles to connect and disconnect with each other mid-transit which provides a balance between efficiency and flexibility when solving complex and large scale tasks in urban or aerial transportation. This paper details a generalized scheme to route multiple modular agents on a graph to a predetermined set of target nodes. The objective is to visit all target nodes while incurring minimum resource expenditure. Agents that are joined together will incur the equivalent cost of a single agent, which is motivated by the logistical benefits of traffic reduction and increased fuel efficiency. To solve this problem, we introduce a novel algorithm that seeks to balance the optimality of the path that every single module takes and the cost benefit of joining modules. Our approach models the agents and targets as point charges, where the modules take the path of highest attractive force from its target node and neighboring agents. We validate our approach by simulating multiple modular agents along real-world transportation routes in the road network of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA. The proposed method easily exceeds the available benchmarks and illustrates the benefits of modularity in multi-target planning problems.