Improved JPS Algorithm for Safe and Efficient Path Planning
Botao Hu, Jian Wang, Xiaokun Zheng, Huawei Liang · 2024
In the contemporary era, the application of autonomous vehicles is expanding, and path planning algorithms serve as a pivotal technology for ensuring the efficiency and safety of autonomous navigation in complex environments. This paper presents an improved Jump Point Search algorithm (JPS) to enhance the safety and efficiency of path planning. The traditional JPS algorithm may encounter the edges of obstacles during the search for jump points, potentially leading to unsafe path planning. To address this issue, an improved jump point search strategy is introduced, ensuring that the path avoids obstacle edges postsearch, thereby enhancing path safety. Moreover, an improved heuristic function is proposed and integrated with the Bidirectional JPS algorithm, which incorporates direction angle and weight factors to dynamically adjust search direction and efficiency, thereby improving search speed. Furthermore, an improved path pruning method is proposed, which modifies the path reachability assessment to shorten path length and enhance path smoothness, while maintaining path safety. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is validated through simulation experiments.