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Parallel, Asymptotically Optimal Algorithms for Moving Target Traveling Salesman Problems

delete2026-06-23
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PRE
AI
A
Anoop Bhat
G
Geordan Gutow
B
Bhaskar Vundurthy
Z
Zhongqiang Ren
S
Sivakumar Rathinam
H
Howie Choset
DOI:10.1109/tro.2026.3706565delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
The moving target traveling salesman problem (MT-TSP) seeks a trajectory that intercepts several moving targets, within a particular time window for each target. When generic nonlinear target trajectories or kinematic constraints on the agent are present, no prior algorithm guarantees convergence to an optimal MT-TSP solution. Therefore, we introduce the iterated random generalized (IRG) TSP framework. The idea behind IRG is to alternate between randomly sampling a set of agent configuration-time points, corresponding to interceptions of targets, and finding a sequence of interception points by solving a generalized TSP (GTSP). This alternation asymptotically converges to the optimum. We introduce two parallel algorithms within the IRG framework. The first algorithm, IRG-parallel generalized large neighborhood search (PGLNS), solves GTSPs using PGLNS, our parallelized extension of state-of-the-art solver GLNS. The second algorithm, parallel communicating GTSPs (PCG), solves GTSPs for several sets of points simultaneously. We present numerical results for three MT-TSP variants: one where intercepting a target only requires coming within a particular distance, another where the agent is a variable-speed Dubins car, and a third where the agent is a robot arm. We show that IRG-PGLNS and PCG converge faster than a baseline based on prior work. We further validate our framework with physical robot experiments.
Keywords:
Combinatorial search
Dubins car
motion planning
parallelization
traveling salesman problem (TSP)

Journal

IEEE Transactions on Robotics cover
IEEE Transactions on Robotics
IF:
10.5
Papers:
3.3K
Citations:
2.8W

Organization

S
shanghai jiao tong university
Scholars:
15.1W
Papers: 11.5W
Citations: 159
C
carnegie mellon university
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1.8K
Papers: 864
Citations: 0
T
texas a&m university
Scholars:
2.4K
Papers: 952
Citations: 0
M
Michigan Technological University
Scholars:
4.9K
Papers: 4.3K
Citations: 6.4K
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