xTrek: An Influence-Aware Technique for Dijkstra and A* Pathfinders

We propose a new pathfinding technique called xTrek that combines conventional pathfinding and influence fields; that is, we are introducing a new influence-sensitive pathfinder or influence-aware pathfinder. The leading idea of influence-aware pathfinding is to avoid unwanted regions and/or converg...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Amador, Gonçalo (author)
Other Authors: Gomes, Abel (author)
Format: article
Language:eng
Published: 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/8298
Country:Portugal
Oai:oai:ubibliorum.ubi.pt:10400.6/8298
Description
Summary:We propose a new pathfinding technique called xTrek that combines conventional pathfinding and influence fields; that is, we are introducing a new influence-sensitive pathfinder or influence-aware pathfinder. The leading idea of influence-aware pathfinding is to avoid unwanted regions and/or converge to desired regions of the search space during the path search. As shown throughout the paper, this region avoidance/convergence is more striking using our technique than in other field-aware pathfinders as, for example, risk-adverse pathfinders and constraint-aware navigation pathfinders. Furthermore, our technique constrains the search space even more than such state-of-the-art influence-aware pathfinders, aiming to reduce the memory space consumption, to speed up pathfinding computations, and at the same time to have better control on the paths to be discovered.