Shashank Shekhar

Bio: Shashank Shekhar is an academic researcher from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The author has contributed to research in topics: Heuristics & Heuristic. The author has an hindex of 3, co-authored 8 publications receiving 18 citations. Previous affiliations of Shashank Shekhar include Indian Institutes of Technology & Indian Institute of Technology Madras.

Safe Multi-Agent Pathfinding with Time Uncertainty

Abstract: In many real-world scenarios, the time it takes for a mobile agent, e.g., a robot, to move from one location to another may vary due to exogenous events and be difficult to predict accurately. Planning in such scenarios is challenging, especially in the context of Multi-Agent Pathfinding (MAPF), where the goal is to find paths to multiple agents and temporal coordination is necessary to avoid collisions. In this work, we consider a MAPF problem with this form of time uncertainty, where we are only given upper and lower bounds on the time it takes each agent to move. The objective is to find a safe solution, which is a solution that can be executed by all agents and is guaranteed to avoid collisions. We propose two complete and optimal algorithms for finding safe solutions based on well-known MAPF algorithms, namely, A* with Operator Decomposition (A* + OD) and Conflict-Based Search (CBS). Experimentally, we observe that on several standard MAPF grids the CBS-based algorithm performs better. We also explore the option of online replanning in this context, i.e., modifying the agents' plans during execution, to reduce the overall execution cost. We consider two online settings: (a) when an agent can sense the current time and its current location, and (b) when the agents can also communicate seamlessly during execution. For each setting, we propose a replanning algorithm and analyze its behavior theoretically and empirically. Our experimental evaluation confirms that indeed online replanning in both settings can significantly reduce solution cost.

Representing and Planning with Interacting Actions and Privacy.

Abstract: Interacting actions – actions whose joint effect differs from the union of their individual effects – are challenging both to represent and to plan with due to their combinatorial nature. So far, there have been few attempts to provide a succinct language for representing them that can also support efficient centralized planning and distributed privacy preserving planning. In this paper we suggest an approach for representing interacting actions succinctly and show how such a domain model can be compiled into a standard single-agent planning problem as well as to privacy preserving multi-agent planning. We test the performance of our method on a number of novel domains involving interacting actions and privacy.

Analysis of spectrum handoff delay using finite queuing model in cognitive radio networks

Abstract: Spectrum handoff is an inevitable phenomenon to exploit dynamic spectrum access in cognitive radio networks (CRNs) for better spectrum utilisation. When a licensed or primary user reclaims its operating channel, the cognitive user has to initiate a suitable handoff procedure for successful completion of its ongoing transmission. This paper analyses the prioritised proactive spectrum handoff decision for a finite capacity cognitive radio network using preemptive resume priority (PRP) M/G/1/K queuing model. Cumulative handoff delay (CHD) and total service time (TST) are taken to investigate the performance of the handoff strategies. We establish an analytical model of cumulative handoff delay and total service time of proactive switching spectrum handoff for the proposed finite length queuing network. The impact of queue length on performance measuring metrics such as CHD and TST in terms of arrival rate of primary users and mobility factor of spectrum holes are presented extensively.

A Factored Approach to Deterministic Contingent Multi-Agent Planning

Abstract: Collaborative Multi-Agent Planning (MAP) under uncertainty with partial observability is a notoriously difficult problem. Such MAP problems are often modeled as DecPOMDPs, or its qualitative variant, QDec-POMDP, which is essentially a MAP version of contingent planning. The QDecPOMDP model was introduced with the hope that its simpler, non-probabilistic structure will allow for better scalability. Indeed, at least with deterministic actions, the recent IMAP algorithm scales much better than comparable DecPOMDP algorithms (Bazinin and Shani 2018). In this work we suggest a new approach to solving Deterministic QDecPOMDPs based on problem factoring. First, we find a solution to a MAP problem where the results of any observation is available to all agents. This is essentially a single-agent planning problem for the entire team. Then, we project the solution tree into sub-trees, one per agent, and let each agent transform its projected tree into a legal local tree. If all agents succeed, we combine the trees into a valid joint-plan. Otherwise, we continue to explore the space of team solutions. This approach is sound, complete, and as our empirical evaluation demonstrates, scales much better than the IMAP algorithm.

Safe Multi-Agent Pathfinding with Time Uncertainty

Abstract: In many real-world scenarios, the time it takes for a mobile agent, e.g., a robot, to move from one location to another may vary due to exogenous events and be difficult to predict accurately. Planning in such scenarios is challenging, especially in the context of Multi-Agent Pathfinding (MAPF), where the goal is to find paths to multiple agents and temporal coordination is necessary to avoid collisions. In this work, we consider a MAPF problem with this form of time uncertainty, where we are only given upper and lower bounds on the time it takes each agent to move. The objective is to find a safe solution, which is a solution that can be executed by all agents and is guaranteed to avoid collisions. We propose two complete and optimal algorithms for finding safe solutions based on well-known MAPF algorithms, namely, A* with Operator Decomposition (A* + OD) and Conflict-Based Search (CBS). Experimentally, we observe that on several standard MAPF grids the CBS-based algorithm performs better. We also explore the option of online replanning in this context, i.e., modifying the agents' plans during execution, to reduce the overall execution cost. We consider two online settings: (a) when an agent can sense the current time and its current location, and (b) when the agents can also communicate seamlessly during execution. For each setting, we propose a replanning algorithm and analyze its behavior theoretically and empirically. Our experimental evaluation confirms that indeed online replanning in both settings can significantly reduce solution cost.

STT-CBS: A Conflict-Based Search Algorithm for Multi-Agent Path Finding with Stochastic Travel Times.

Abstract: We address the Multi-Agent Path Finding problem on a graph for agents assigned to goals in a known environment and under uncertainty. Our algorithm, called STT-CBS, uses Conflict-Based Search (CBS) with a stochastic travel time (STT) model for the agents. We model robot travel time along each edge of the graph by independent gamma-distributed random variables and propose probabilistic conflict identification and constraint creation methods to robustly handle travel time uncertainty. We show that under reasonable assumptions our algorithm is complete and optimal in terms of expected sum of travel times, while ensuring an upper bound on each pairwise conflict probability. Simulations and hardware experiments show that STT-CBS is able to significantly decrease conflict probability over CBS, while remaining within the same complexity class.

Differentially Private Multi-Agent Planning for Logistic-like Problems

Abstract: Planning is one of the main approaches used to improve agents' working efficiency by making plans beforehand. However, during planning, agents face the risk of having their private information leaked. This paper proposes a novel strong privacy-preserving planning approach for logistic-like problems. This approach outperforms existing approaches by addressing two challenges: 1) simultaneously achieving strong privacy, completeness and efficiency, and 2) addressing communication constraints. These two challenges are prevalent in many real-world applications including logistics in military environments and packet routing in networks. To tackle these two challenges, our approach adopts the differential privacy technique, which can both guarantee strong privacy and control communication overhead. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to apply differential privacy to the field of multi-agent planning as a means of preserving the privacy of agents for logistic-like problems. We theoretically prove the strong privacy and completeness of our approach and empirically demonstrate its efficiency. We also theoretically analyze the communication overhead of our approach and illustrate how differential privacy can be used to control it.

Signaling Friends and Head-Faking Enemies Simultaneously: Balancing Goal Obfuscation and Goal Legibility

Abstract: In order to be useful in the real world, AI agents need to plan and act in the presence of others, who may include adversarial and cooperative entities. In this paper, we consider the problem where an autonomous agent needs to act in a manner that clarifies its objectives to cooperative entities while preventing adversarial entities from inferring those objectives. We show that this problem is solvable when cooperative entities and adversarial entities use different types of sensors and/or prior knowledge. We develop two new solution approaches for computing such plans. One approach provides an optimal solution to the problem by using an IP solver to provide maximum obfuscation for adversarial entities while providing maximum legibility for cooperative entities in the environment, whereas the other approach provides a satisficing solution using heuristic-guided forward search to achieve preset levels of obfuscation and legibility for adversarial and cooperative entities respectively. We show the feasibility and utility of our algorithms through extensive empirical evaluation on problems derived from planning benchmarks.

Optimization techniques for spectrum handoff in cognitive radio networks using cluster based cooperative spectrum sensing

Abstract: Spectrum handoff has an undesirable effect in utilizing the space for Secondary user (SU) in the spectrum, which causes a handoff delay in cognitive radio network. The SU frequently faces the problem of handoff process which is likely to interrupt the service and substantial delay over the quality of service during the transmission. It struggles towards identifying the channel during the handoff by occupying a major role in today’s era. Based on this research, an effectual spectrum handoff scheme is anticipated using Spectrum Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (SpecBPSO) algorithm and M/G/1 queuing model. Towards improving the efficiency of SU and reducing the congestion over channel, Cluster Based Cooperative Spectrum Sensing (CBCSS) is used. The cluster head is selected dynamically based on the sensing signal of the SU. The cluster head is associated with the SU base station to report the active and inactive channel in the spectrum and later decision report is generated by the fusion center. In this proposed method, SpecBPSO uses the Boolean variable to reduce the total service time for handoff to find the optimal global value using bitwise and mutation operator format. This study work also presents an outline to observe the outcome of primary user’s activity and the delay performance of spectrum handoff with the possible interruptions in a CR network. The simulation setup of the proposed work is compared with spectrum particle swarm optimization (SpecPSO), binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO) and ant colony optimization that provide a better tradeoff over the delay achievement, maximize the SNR with the three benchmark functions and optimal handoff.