Improved A-star Algorithm in Efficiency Enhancing and Path Smoothing

A-star algorithm is a classical path planning method, but the generated path is often not smooth enough, which is difficult to be directly applied to cars or other mobile robots. At the same time, the wayfinding efficiency of a* algorithm also needs to be further improved. To solve the above problems, this study was improved by adjusting the way the A- star algorithm evaluated each node and used Bezier curve to smooth the path, thus improve the efficiency of the A-star algorithm and make the resulting path more suitable for the use of automobile robots. After the improvement, the number of search nodes and the time to complete the path are almost reduced by half compared with the traditional A-star algorithm. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, and show that the improved method can generate smooth paths while improving the planning efficiency.