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arXiv · 2504.14680

A Complete and Bounded-Suboptimal Algorithm for a Moving Target Traveling Salesman Problem with Obstacles in 3D

Anoop Bhat·Geordan Gutow·Bhaskar Vundurthy·Zhongqiang Ren·Sivakumar Rathinam·Howie Choset
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Abstract

The moving target traveling salesman problem with obstacles (MT-TSP-O) seeks an obstacle-free trajectory for an agent that intercepts a given set of moving targets, each within specified time windows, and returns to the agent's starting position. Each target moves with a constant velocity within its time windows, and the agent has a speed limit no smaller than any target's speed. We present FMC*-TSP, the first complete and bounded-suboptimal algorithm for the MT-TSP-O, and results for an agent whose configuration space is $\mathbb{R}^3$. Our algorithm interleaves a high-level search and a low-level search, where the high-level search solves a generalized traveling salesman problem with time windows (GTSP-TW) to find a sequence of targets and corresponding time windows for the agent to visit. Given such a sequence, the low-level search then finds an associated agent trajectory. To solve the low-level planning problem, we develop a new algorithm called FMC*, which finds a shortest path on a graph of convex sets (GCS) via implicit graph search and pruning techniques specialized for problems with moving targets. We test FMC*-TSP on 280 problem instances with up to 40 targets and demonstrate its smaller median runtime than a baseline based on prior work.

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Anoop Bhat, Geordan Gutow, Bhaskar Vundurthy, Zhongqiang Ren, Sivakumar Rathinam, Howie Choset. 2025-04-23. A Complete and Bounded-Suboptimal Algorithm for a Moving Target Traveling Salesman Problem with Obstacles in 3D. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.14680

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