Autonomous land vehicle path planning algorithm based on improved heuristic function of A-Star

Abstract

The path planning of autonomous land vehicle has become a research hotspot in recent years. In this article, we present a novel path planning algorithm for an autonomous land vehicle. According to the characteristics of autonomous movement towards the autonomous land vehicle, an improved A-Star path planning algorithm is designed. The disadvantages of using the A-Star algorithm for path planning are that the path planned by the A-Star algorithm contains many unnecessary turning points and is not smooth enough. Autonomous land vehicle needs to adjust its posture at each turning point, which will greatly waste time and also will not be conducive to the motion control of autonomous land vehicle. In view of these shortcomings, this article proposes a new heuristic function combined with the artificial potential field method, which contains both distance information and obstacle information. Our proposed algorithm shows excellent performance in improving the execution efficiency and reducing the number of turning points. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm, compared with the traditional A-Star algorithm, makes the path smoother and makes the autonomous land vehicle easier to control.