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Concrete Multi-Agent Path Planning Enabling Kinodynamically Aggressive Maneuvers

Keisuke Okumura 1,2,*,† , Guang Yang 1,† , Zhan Gao 1 , Heedo Woo 1 , Amanda Prorok 1,*

1. University of Cambridge, UK

2. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan

† Equal contribution / * Corresponding authors (see Contact section)

Published in npj Robotics (2026)

Abstract

Coordinated trajectory planning is essential for multi-robot applications, ranging from factory automation to entertainment. The main challenge is providing long-term coordination guarantees, such as freedom from collisions, deadlocks, and livelocks, as well as kinodynamic agility, especially in densely populated environments. Although continuous optimization provides agility, it is computationally expensive. In contrast, discrete search is scalable but lacks physical realism for robot execution. This study introduces concrete planning, a hybrid approach that captures real-world continuous dynamics while maintaining scalable guaranteed planning via discrete search. We integrate recent advances in robot dynamics learning, optimal control, and anytime complete planning into a modular framework. The framework is deployed with 40 robots, including 20 aerial, 8 ground, and 12 obstacle robots, operating in a compact laboratory space. Despite the dense and time-varying setup, the robots achieve consecutive navigation missions on-demand, while executing aggressive maneuvers that substantially reduce task completion time.

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Citation

@article{okumura2026concrete,
  title   = {Concrete Multi-Agent Path Planning Enabling Kinodynamically Aggressive Maneuvers},
  author  = {Okumura, Keisuke and Yang, Guang and Gao, Zhan and Woo, Heedo and Prorok, Amanda},
  journal = {npj Robotics},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.1038/s44182-026-00083-2}
}

Contact

Corresponding authors: ko393@cst.cam.ac.uk , asp45@cst.cam.ac.uk