Fast Replanning Multi-Heuristic A *

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed a novel path replanning algorithm on arbitrary graphs. To avoid computationally heavy preprocessing and to reduce required memory to store the expanded vertices of the previous search, we defined the feature vertices, which are extracted from the previous path by a simple algorithm to compare the costs between adjacent vertices along the path once. Proper additional heuristic functions are designed for these feature vertices to work as local attractors guiding the search toward the previous path’s neighbors. To avoid unnecessary expansions and speed up the search, these additional heuristic functions are properly managed to stop intriguing or guiding search toward the feature vertices. The proposed algorithm of Fast Replanning Multi-Heuristic A* is a variation of Shared Multi-Heuristic A* while removing or deactivating the additional heuristic functions during the search. Fast Replanning Multi-Heuristic A* guarantees the bounded suboptimality while efficiently exploring the graph toward the goal vertex. The performance of the proposed algorithm was compared with weighted A* and D* lite by simulating numerous path replanning problems in maze-like maps.