A star path following mobile robot

Abstract

This paper proposed A Star (A∗) Path Following (APF) Mobile Robot with Intelligent Path Mapping (IPM) visual interface program in Windows operating system environment. A microcontroller-based APF wheeled mobile robot is developed. A computer Graphical User Interface (GUI) is created with A∗ algorithm — the algorithm widely used for path finding and graph traversal, integrated to develop the IPM visual interface. The GUI maps the optimum path from a starting location to a goal using the A∗ algorithm integrated and generates a series of instructions, where the APF robot is able to communicate, download, store and process instructions from the GUI. Execution of instructions can be done by the APF robot alone afterwards.