Abstract
The train routing and timetabling problem consists of setting routes and schedules of a set of vehicles given their initial timetables and a railway network. The number of vehicles, the complexity and limited capacity of the railway network, and the time constraints make this problem difficult to solve. In this paper, we model this problem as a Multi-Agent Pathfinding problem, and propose a Conflict-Based Search approach to solve it. In our approach, we consider the complex properties found in this scenario such as continuous time, agents that function as convoys of arbitrary length, arbitrary action duration, and railway networks to find a solution. We analyze and discuss our approach explaining the main difficulties and evaluate it on several scenarios.
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Notes
- 1.
Results obtained on an Intel Core i7 2.9 GHz CPU computer with 16 GB of RAM.
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded by research projects TIN2017-88476-C2-2-R, RTC-2017-6753-4 of Spanish Ministerio de EconomÃa, Industria y Competitividad/FEDER UE, and the Madrid government under the Multiannual Agreement with UC3M in the line of Excellence of University Professors (EPUC3M17), V PRICIT (Regional Programme of Research and Technological Innovation). This work was developed in cooperation with Goal Systems S.L. (www.goalsystems.com) whose working team provided expert knowledge of railway management and its properties. Special thanks to the technical staff for making this cooperation possible.
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Salerno, M., E-MartÃn, Y., Fuentetaja, R., Gragera, A., Pozanco, A., Borrajo, D. (2021). Train Route Planning as a Multi-agent Path Finding Problem. In: Alba, E., et al. Advances in Artificial Intelligence. CAEPIA 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12882. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85713-4_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85713-4_23
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