Optimal Path Planning Using Swarm Intelligence Based Hybrid Techniques

Abstract

The planning of optimal path is an important research domain due to vast applications of optimal path planning in the robotics, simulation and modeling, computer graphics, virtual reality estimation and animation, and bioinformatics. The optimal path planning application demands to determine the collision free shortest and optimal path. There can be numerous possibilities that to find the path with optimal length based on different types of available obstacles during the path and different types of workspace environment. This research work aims to identify the optimum path from the initial source-point to final point for the unknown workspace environment consists of static obstacles. For this experimentation, swarm intelligence based hybrid concepts are considered as the work collaboration and intelligence behavior of swarm agents provides the resourceful solution of NP hard problems. Here, the hybridization of concepts makes the solution of problem more efficient. Among swarm intelligence concepts, cuckoo search (CS) algorithm is one of the efficient algorithms due to clever behavior and brood parasitic property of cuckoo birds. In this research work, two hybrid concepts are proposed. First algorithm is the hybridized concept of cuckoo search with bat algorithm (BA) termed as CS-BAPP. Another algorithm is the hybridized concept of cuckoo search with firefly algorithm (FA) termed as CS-FAPP. Both algorithms are initially tested on the benchmarks functions and applied to the path planning problem. For path planning, a real time dataset area of Alwar region situated at Rajasthan (India) is considered. The selected region consists of urban and dense vegetation land cover features. The results for the optimal path planning on Alwar region are assessed using the evaluation metrics of minimum number of iterations, error rate, success rate, and simulation time. Moreover, the results are also compared with the individual FA, BA, and CS along with the comparison of hybrid concepts.