ANN: a heuristic search algorithm based on artificial neural networks.

Heuristic search algorithm has been widely used in the fields of geographic information system, intelligent robot path planning, etc. This paper proposes a heuristic search algorithm based on artificial neural network, which is named ANN*. The architecture of the ANN* algorithm is similar to the A* algorithm, but it contains a novel heuristic function of the new design. This novel heuristic function utilizes the regression network, which is a kind of classical artificial neural network. In the ANN* algorithm, the artificial neural network is used to learn the features of massive map data and predict the path search difficulty of the map. In order to guarantee the diversity of the training data, this paper designs a random map generation framework, which is able to generate random grid maps according to the length, width and density. The experiments show that the ANN* algorithm can accomplish the task of path planning in the grid map with high quality. This paper provides a new scheme of exploring the applications of artificial neural network for heuristic search algorithm.