A* Algorithm in MATLAB

Try the A* path-finding algorithm in MATLAB with the 2D map.

⚠️ This is an in-progress study project. Codes here may give a reasonable result, but I haven't fully checked.

Introduction

The demo.m shows a simple example of A* algorithm. You just create a GridMap with matrix of costs. Given the start and goal Node (matrix index), the AStar or redblobAStar should be capable to find the costless path and show the result.

clear;clc
close all

% Generate a map with random costs
mapdata = zeros(10, 15)+0.5;
mapdata(3, 5:13) = 100;
mapdata(3:9, 13) = 100;
map = GridMap(mapdata, 90);

% Set start and goal position (matrix index)
start = Node(10, 1);
goal = Node(2, 10);

% Call AStar to find the costless path
astar_path = AStar(map, start, goal, 'showprocess', true, 'framerate', 0.1, 'costcolor', [1 1 1], 'costalpha', 0.7);
fprintf('AStar total cost: %.2f\n', astar_path(end, 3));

References

I started from the blog Introduction to the A* Algorithm, which is very interesting with interactive visual explanations. But there are some changes compared with the original version.

If you want to dive into the original algorithm, you may want to read the paper A Formal Basis for the Heuristic Determination of Minimum Cost Paths.