How can I find the shortest path between 100 moving targets? (Live demo included.)

Question

Background

This picture illustrates the problem:

I can cont

Answer 1

Have you searched the literature? I found these papers which seems to analyse your problem:

• "Tracking moving targets and the non- stationary traveling salesman problem": http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.85.9940

• "The moving-target traveling salesman problem": http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.57.6403

UPDATE 1:

The above two papers seems to concentrate on linear movement for the euclidian metric.

Answer 2

Greedy method

One approach suggested in the comments is to go to the closest target first.

I've put up a version of the demo which includes the cost calculated via this greedy method here.

The code is:

function greedyMethod(start_x,start_y) {
  var still_to_visit = (1<<pts.length)-1;
  var pt=[start_x,start_y];
  var s=0;
  while (still_to_visit) {
    var besti=-1;
    var bestc=0;
    for(i=0;i<pts.length;i++) {
      var bit = 1<<i;
      if (still_to_visit&bit) {
        c = fastest_route(pt,getPt(i,s));
        if (besti<0 || c<bestc) {
          besti = i;
          bestc = c;
        }
      }
    }
    s+=c;
    still_to_visit -= 1<<besti;
    pt=getPt(besti,s);
  }
  return s;
}

For 10 targets it is around twice the optimal distance, but sometimes much more (e.g. *4) and occasionally even hits the optimum.

This approach is very efficient so I can afford some cycles to improve the answer.

Next I'm considering using ant colony methods to see if they can explore the solution space effectively.

Ant colony method

An Ant colony method seems to work remarkable well for this problem. The link in this answer now compares the results when using both greedy and ant colony method.

The idea is that ants choose their route probabilistically based on the current level of pheromone. After every 10 trials, we deposit additional pheromone along the shortest trail they found.

function antMethod(start_x,start_y) {
  // First establish a baseline based on greedy
  var L = greedyMethod(start_x,start_y);
  var n = pts.length;
  var m = 10; // number of ants
  var numrepeats = 100;
  var alpha = 0.1;
  var q = 0.9;
  var t0 = 1/(n*L);

  pheromone=new Array(n+1); // entry n used for starting position
  for(i=0;i<=n;i++) {
    pheromone[i] = new Array(n);
    for(j=0;j<n;j++)
      pheromone[i][j] = t0; 
  }

  h = new Array(n);
  overallBest=10000000;
  for(repeat=0;repeat<numrepeats;repeat++) {
    for(ant=0;ant<m;ant++) {
      route = new Array(n);
      var still_to_visit = (1<<n)-1;
      var pt=[start_x,start_y];
      var s=0;
      var last=n;
      var step=0;
      while (still_to_visit) {
        var besti=-1;
        var bestc=0;
        var totalh=0;
        for(i=0;i<pts.length;i++) {
          var bit = 1<<i;
          if (still_to_visit&bit) {
            c = pheromone[last][i]/(1+fastest_route(pt,getPt(i,s)));
            h[i] = c;
            totalh += h[i];
            if (besti<0 || c>bestc) {
              besti = i;
              bestc = c;
            }
          }
        }
        if (Math.random()>0.9) {
          thresh = totalh*Math.random();
          for(i=0;i<pts.length;i++) {
            var bit = 1<<i;
            if (still_to_visit&bit) {
              thresh -= h[i];
              if (thresh<0) {
                besti=i;
                break;
              }
            }
          }
        }
        s += fastest_route(pt,getPt(besti,s));
        still_to_visit -= 1<<besti;
        pt=getPt(besti,s);
        route[step]=besti;
        step++;
        pheromone[last][besti] = (1-alpha) * pheromone[last][besti] + alpha*t0;
        last = besti;
      }
      if (ant==0 || s<bestantscore) {
        bestroute=route;
        bestantscore = s;
      }
    }
    last = n;
    var d = 1/(1+bestantscore);
    for(i=0;i<n;i++) {
      var besti = bestroute[i];
      pheromone[last][besti] = (1-alpha) * pheromone[last][besti] + alpha*d;
      last = besti;
    }
    overallBest = Math.min(overallBest,bestantscore);
  }
  return overallBest;
}

Results

This ant colony method using 100 repeats of 10 ants is still very fast (37ms for 16 targets compared to 3700ms for the exhaustive search) and seems very accurate.

The table below shows the results for 10 trials using 16 targets:

   Greedy   Ant     Optimal
   46       29      29
   91       38      37
  103       30      30
   86       29      29
   75       26      22
  182       38      36
  120       31      28
  106       38      30
   93       30      30
  129       39      38

The ant method seems significantly better than greedy and often very close to optimal.

Answer 3

The problem may be represented in terms of the Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem, and then converted to a conventional Traveling Salesman Problem. This is a well-studied problem. It is possible that the most efficient solutions to the OP's problem are no more efficient than solutions to the TSP, but by no means certain (I am probably failing to take advantage of some aspects of the OP's problem structure that would allow for a quicker solution, such as its cyclical nature). Either way, it is a good starting point.

From C. Noon & J.Bean, An Efficient Transformation of the Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem:

The Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem (GTSP) is a useful model for problems involving decisions of selection and sequence. The asymmetric version of the problem is defined on a directed graph with nodes N, connecting arcs A and a vector of corresponding arc costs c. The nodes are pregrouped into m mutually exclusive and exhaustive nodesets. Connecting arcs are defined only between nodes belonging to different sets, that is, there are no intraset arcs. Each defined arc has a corresponding non-negative cost. The GTSP can be stated as the problem of finding a minimum cost m-arc cycle which includes exactly one node from each nodeset.

For the OP's problem:

• Each member of N is a particular fish's location at a particular time. Represent this as (x, y, t), where (x, y) is a grid coordinate, and t is the time at which the fish will be at this coordinate. For the leftmost fish in the OP's example, the first few of these (1-based) are: (3, 9, 1), (4, 9, 2), (5, 9, 3) as the fish moves right.
• For any member of N let fish(n_i) return the ID of the fish represented by the node. For any two members of N we can calculate manhattan(n_i, n_j) for the manhattan distance between the two nodes, and time(n_i, n_j) for the time offset between the nodes.
• The number of disjoint subsets m is equal to the number of fish. The disjoint subset S_i will consist only of the nodes for which fish(n) == i.
• If for two nodes i and j fish(n_i) != fish(n_j) then there is an arc between i and j.
• The cost between node i and node j is time(n_i, n_j), or undefined if time(n_i, n_j) < distance(n_i, n_j) (i.e. the location can't be reached before the fish gets there, perhaps because it is backwards in time). Arcs of this latter type can be removed.
• An extra node will need to be added representing the location of the player with arcs and costs to all other nodes.

Solving this problem would then result in a single visit to each node subset (i.e. each fish is obtained once) for a path with minimal cost (i.e. minimal time for all fish to be obtained).

The paper goes on to describe how the above formulation may be transformed into a traditional Traveling Salesman Problem and subsequently solved or approximated with existing techniques. I have not read through the details but another paper that does this in a way it proclaims to be efficient is this one.

There are obvious issues with complexity. In particular, the node space is infinite! This can be alleviated by only generating nodes up to a certain time horizon. If t is the number of timesteps to generate nodes for and f is the number of fish then the size of the node space will be t * f. A node at time j will have at most (f - 1) * (t - j) outgoing arcs (as it can't move back in time or to its own subset). The total number of arcs will be in the order of t^2 * f^2 arcs. The arc structure can probably be tidied up, to take advantage of the fact the fish paths are eventually cyclical. The fish will repeat their configuration once every lowest common denominator of their cycle lengths so perhaps this fact can be used.

I don't know enough about the TSP to say whether this is feasible or not, and I don't think it means that the problem posted is necessarily NP-hard... but it is one approach towards finding an optimal or bounded solution.

Answer 4

I think another approch would be:

• calculate the path of the targets - predictive.
• than use Voronoi diagrams

Quote wikipedia:

In mathematics, a Voronoi diagram is a way of dividing space into a number of regions. A set of points (called seeds, sites, or generators) is specified beforehand and for each seed there will be a corresponding region consisting of all points closer to that seed than to any other.

So, you choose a target, follow it's path for some steps and set a seed point there. Do this with all other targets as well and you get a voroni diagram. Depending in which area you are, you move to the seedpoint of it. Viola, you got the first fish. Now repeat this step until you cought them all.