Multi-Agent Path Finding in Multi-Floor Warehouses with Elevators

Abstract

This work studies multi-robot navigation in multi-floor facilities equipped with elevators. The baseline mathematical model is Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) in a discrete space-time environment. Unlike the classical single-floor MAPF setting, multi-floor warehouses include vertical transport re- sources (elevators) with limited throughput and nonzero travel time between floors. In the existing literature, elevator-control tasks and MAPF tasks are usu- ally considered separately: elevator papers do not account for detailed coordina- tion of many mobile agents, while MAPF papers assume single-level geometry or simplified vertical transitions. The goal of this study is to formalize MAPF for multi-floor environments with elevators, and to adapt and evaluate existing co- operative planning algorithms under elevator-specific constraints.