Improved A* Algorithm for Path Planning of Intelligent Amphibious Vehicles

The traditional path planning method does not consider the difficulty of amphibious vehicles in complex terrains such as waters and swamps, and it is difficult to plan a safe and feasible travel route in complex terrain environment reasonably. To address the above problems, an improved A* algorithm based on optimized weight coefficients and heuristic functions is proposed to design an inflated layer of complex terrain in the cost map, and design the weight coefficients and scheduling rules of actual and heuristic costs based on the inflated layer, and design the preference heuristic function by calculating the Euclidean distance between the entrance of the preferred terrain and the current node. The algorithm is compared with the traditional Dijkstra algorithm, the traditional A* algorithm and the improved A* algorithm based on static weights in simulation experiments under complex terrain environment. The experimental results show that the improved A* algorithm based on optimized weight coefficients and heuristic functions has fewer redundant extended nodes and less costly planned travel paths than the above algorithms.