A general, fully distributed multi-agent planning algorithm

We present a fully distributed multi-agent planning algorithm. Our methodology uses distributed constraint satisfaction to coordinate between agents, and local planning to ensure the consistency of these coordination points. To solve the distributed CSP efficiently, we must modify existing methods to take advantage of the structure of the underlying planning problem. In multi-agent planning domains with limited agent interaction, our algorithm empirically shows scalability beyond state of the art centralized solvers. Our work also provides a novel, real-world setting for testing and evaluating distributed constraint satisfaction algorithms in structured domains and illustrates how existing techniques can be altered to address such structure.