A Survey of A-Star Algorithm Family for Motion Planning of Autonomous Vehicles

For autonomous vehicles, one of the prime tasks to be able to function without any human assistance is the task of motion planning. Motion planning involves planning a safe, collision-free and a computationally feasible path to avoid the obstacles in their way and precisely reach the desired location in as less time as possible. The continual efforts in developing new and improving existing path planning algorithms has led to significant advances in improving the autonomy of the autonomous vehicles. One of the most popular algorithms used in path planning is the A * search algorithm, whose several variations have been formulated over the years. This gives a rise to the need of a comprehensive survey of such variations of the algorithm. This paper presents a review of various variations of the A * algorithm along with a brief review of the classical A * algorithm.