Implementation and visualization of weighted A-Star algorithm and bidirectional weighted A-Star algorithm under large-scale road network

In the real world, traffic scenes are complex and contain intricate road networks, which makes the shortest path computation on large-scale road networks a challenging task. Existing research has concentrated on small-scale urban road networks or grid maps. In practical scenarios, however, we are often faced with seeking the shortest paths on large-scale road networks. For this reason, it is imperative to develop efficient shortest path searching algorithms, as it offers significant savings in time and resources. To tackle this issue, this paper proposes two improved A* algorithms, namely the Weighted A* algorithm and the Bidirectional Weighted A* algorithm. To verify the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms, we validated the performance of our proposed algorithms against the conventional Dijkstra and A* algorithms on urban road networks of different sizes. Our results significantly demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution, as both algorithms significantly outperform Dijkstra's and A* algorithms, with little loss of accuracy.