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A Algorithm: Presented By-Ishan Gupta Pratyush Awasthi Mohd. Shariq Siraj Aryan Rastogi

A* algorithm is a popular pathfinding algorithm that is more intelligent than other algorithms. It uses heuristics to estimate the cost of the shortest path to the goal, guiding the search towards the shortest path. The A* algorithm initializes open and closed lists, then iterates through the open list, calculating path costs using the heuristic and finding successors until the goal is found. Common heuristics include Manhattan distance, diagonal distance, and Euclidean distance. A* is used for pathfinding in games and maps. The time complexity is O(E) and auxiliary space is O(V) in the worst case.

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pratyush awasthi
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55 views

A Algorithm: Presented By-Ishan Gupta Pratyush Awasthi Mohd. Shariq Siraj Aryan Rastogi

A* algorithm is a popular pathfinding algorithm that is more intelligent than other algorithms. It uses heuristics to estimate the cost of the shortest path to the goal, guiding the search towards the shortest path. The A* algorithm initializes open and closed lists, then iterates through the open list, calculating path costs using the heuristic and finding successors until the goal is found. Common heuristics include Manhattan distance, diagonal distance, and Euclidean distance. A* is used for pathfinding in games and maps. The time complexity is O(E) and auxiliary space is O(V) in the worst case.

Uploaded by

pratyush awasthi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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A * ALGORITHM

Presented by-
Ishan Gupta
Pratyush Awasthi
Mohd. Shariq Siraj
Aryan Rastogi
WHAT IS A * ALGORITHM AND WHY A* ALGORITHM

• A* Search algorithm is one of the best and popular technique used in path-finding and graph traversals.
• A* Search algorithms, unlike other traversal techniques, it has “brains”. What it means is that it is really a smart
algorithm which separates it from the other conventional algorithms. This fact is cleared in detail in below sections.
• And it is also worth mentioning that many games and web-based maps use this algorithm to find the shortest path very
efficiently (approximation).
EXPLANATIO
N

• // A* Search Algorithm
• 1. Initialize the open list
• 2. Initialize the closed list
• put the starting node on the open
• list (you can leave its f at zero)

• 3. while the open list is not empty


• a) find the node with the least f on
• the open list, call it "q"

• b) pop q off the open list


•
• c) generate q's 8 successors and set their
• parents to q
• d) for each successor
• i) if successor is the goal, stop search
• successor.g = q.g + distance between
• successor and q
• successor.h = distance from goal to
• successor (This can be done using many
• ways, we will discuss three heuristics-
• Manhattan, Diagonal and Euclidean
• Heuristics)
•
• successor.f = successor.g + successor.h
• ii) if a node with the same position as
• successor is in the OPEN list which has a
• lower f than successor, skip this successor

• iii) if a node with the same position as


• successor is in the CLOSED list which has
• a lower f than successor, skip this successor
• otherwise, add the node to the open list
• end (for loop)
•
• e) push q on the closed list
• end (while loop)
• So suppose as in the below figure if we want to reach the target cell from the source cell, then the A* Search algorithm
would follow path as shown below. Note that the below figure is made by considering Euclidean Distance as a
heuristics.
HEURISTIC
S

• We can calculate g but how to calculate h ?


• We can do things.
• A) Either calculate the exact value of h (which is certainly time consuming).
• OR
• B ) Approximate the value of h using some heuristics (less time consuming).
• We will discuss both of the methods.
• A) Exact Heuristics –
• We can find exact values of h, but that is generally very time consuming.
• Below are some of the methods to calculate the exact value of h.
• 1) Pre-compute the distance between each pair of cells before running the A* Search Algorithm.
• 2) If there are no blocked cells/obstacles then we can just find the exact value of h without any pre-computation using
the distance formula/Euclidean Distance
• B) Approximation Heuristics –
• There are generally three approximation heuristics to calculate h –
• 1) Manhattan Distance –
•

• It is nothing but the sum of absolute values of differences in the goal’s x and y coordinates and the current cell’s x and y
coordinates respectively, i.e.,
•
• h = abs (current_cell.x – goal.x) + abs (current_cell.y – goal.y)
• When to use this heuristic? – When we are allowed to move only in four directions only (right, left, top, bottom)
• The Manhattan Distance Heuristics is shown by the below figure (assume red spot as source cell and green spot as target
cell).
• 2) Diagonal Distance-
• It is nothing but the maximum of absolute values of differences in the goal’s x and y coordinates and the current cell’s x
and y coordinates respectively, i.e.,
• h = max { abs(current_cell.x – goal.x), abs(current_cell.y – goal.y) }
• When to use this heuristic? – When we are allowed to move in eight directions only (similar to a move of a King in
Chess)
• The Diagonal Distance Heuristics is shown by the below figure (assume red spot as source cell and green spot as target
cell).
• 3) Euclidean Distance-
• As it is clear from its name, it is nothing but the distance between the current cell and the goal cell using the distance
formula
• h = sqrt ( (current_cell.x – goal.x)2 + (current_cell.y – goal.y)2 )
• When to use this heuristic? – When we are allowed to move in any directions.
• The Euclidean Distance Heuristics is shown by the below figure (assume red spot as source cell and green spot as target
cell).

• Relation (Similarity and Differences) with other algorithms-


• Dijkstra is a special case of A* Search Algorithm, where h = 0 for all nodes.
LIMITATION
S

• Although being the best pathfinding algorithm around, A* Search Algorithm doesn’t produce the shortest path always,
as it relies heavily on heuristics / approximations to calculate – h

APPLICATIONS

• This is the most interesting part of A* Search Algorithm. They are used in games! But how?
• Ever played Tower Defense Games ?
• Tower defense is a type of strategy video game where the goal is to defend a player’s territories or possessions by
obstructing enemy attackers, usually achieved by placing defensive structures on or along their path of attack.
• A* Search Algorithm is often used to find the shortest path from one point to another point. You can use this for each enemy
to find a path to the goal.
• One example of this is the very popular game- Warcraft III
TIME
COMPLEXITY

• Considering a graph, it may take us to travel all the edge to reach the destination cell from the source cell [For
example, consider a graph where source and destination nodes are connected by a series of edges, like – 0(source) –
>1 –> 2 –> 3 (target)
• So the worse case time complexity is O(E), where E is the number of edges in the graph

AUXILIARY SPACE

• In the worse case we can have all the edges inside the open list, so required auxiliary space in worst case is O(V),
where V is the total number of vertices.

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