Move Table: An Intelligent Software Tool for OptimalPath Finding and Halt Schedule Generation

Abstract

This study aims to help army officials in taking decisions before war to decide the optimalpath for army troops moving between two points in a real world digital terrain, consideringfactors like traveled distance, terrain type, terrain slope, and road network. There can optionallybe one or more enemies (obstacles) located on the terrain which should be avoided. A tile-basedA* search strategy with diagonal distance and tie-breaker heuristics is proposed for finding theoptimal path between source and destination nodes across a real-world  3-D  terrain. A performancecomparison (time analysis, search space analysis, and accuracy) has been made between themultiresolution A* search and the proposed tile-based A* search for large-scale digital terrainmaps. Different heuristics, which are used by the algorithms to guide these to the goal node,are presented and compared to overcome some of the computational constraints associated withpath finding on large digital terrains. Finally, a halt schedule is generated using the optimal path,weather condition, moving time, priority and type of a column, so that the senior military plannerscan strategically decide in advance the time and locations where the troops have to halt orovertake other troops depending on their priority and also the time of reaching the destination.