ARTIFICIAL INTELIGANCE AND THE PROBLEM OF PATH FINDING IN ROBOT SIMULATIONS
A basic problem in robotics, especially in advanced graphical simulation systems, consists of solving a problem of finding an optimal path for moving robotic objects from a known starting position to a goal point. This problem is generally complex and it is usually associated with artificial intelligence and advanced numerical computations. Standard algorithms such are A*, Dijkstra's algorithm, genetic algorithms or breadth-first search are among the most popular for such problems. In this paper we present a graphical simulation system in 2D that effectively solves a path finding problem based on a well known A* algorithm. A* algorithm is used because of its popularity, flexibility and the fact that can be applied in a wide range of contexts. The programming is done in the C# language under the latest .NET 2.0 framework. The resulting software is tested on number of different configurations and optimal solutions are found quickly and effectively. It is shown however, that if the heuristic is not admissible, the applied algorithm cannot guarantee the minimal distance.