Block-Guided Theta* path planning algorithm

Grid-based path planning is a widely discussed problem. Pre-existing algorithms always find paths with unrealistic looking(such as A*) or spend lots of effort expanding redundant vertices and thus causing time and memory waste(such as A*,A* with Post-Smoothing,Basic Theta* and Angle-Propagation Theta*). In this paper, we present Block-Guided Theta*, a variation of A* which expanding vertices in a more heuristic way. It significantly reduces the number of redundant vertex expansions and finds a even shorter path with less time and memory consumption. We compare Block-Guided Theta* with the former four existing algorithms, and although all these algorithms can't guarantee to find the real shortest path, we show experimentally that Block-Guided Theta* finds shorter path more quickly and memory economizing than other algorithms.