Planning efficient long-range movement is a fundamental requirement of most military operations. Intelligent mobile autonomous vehicles designed for battlefield support missions must have this capability. We propose an efficient heuristic algorithm for planning near-optimal high-level routes through complex terrain maps, modeled by the Weighted-Region Problem (WRP). The algorithm is driven by our adaptation of the combinatorial optimization technique called simulated annealing. The WRP provides a cartographically powerful representation for planar maps. Terrain features are modeled by polygonal homogenous-cost regions. A cost efficient assigned to each region indicates the relative cost per unit distance for movement in the region by a point agent no the ground. Region cost coefficients are assumed to be invariant with direction of movement. Given a start and a goal point, a solution (not necessarily optimal) is a set of piecewise-linear connected segments, spanning from start to goal. The cost of a solution path is the sum of the weighted lengths of all segments in the path, where the weighted length of each segment is the product of it Euclidian length and the cost coefficient of the region it crosses. Ideally, we seek the least cost path. However, as problem instances approach the actual complexity of the battlefield, faster solutions become more desirable than absolute optimality. We introduce heuristics designed to replace the search space independently of start and goal locations, thus allowing map preprocessing. We use other heuristics to improve the efficiency of local cost function optimization as well as the annealing process itself.http://archive.org/details/stochasticapproa00kindMajor, United States ArmyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited
