A modified A* algorithm for path planning in the radioactive environment of nuclear facilities

The search efficiency is low when using the traditional A* algorithm for radiation field path planning. In order to prevent the situation where one of the two cost functions of F(n) in the A* algorithm is significantly larger than the other, this paper presents a predicted cost method as a heuristic function of the A* algorithm and creates a weighting scheme to balance the actual and predicted costs in the A* algorithm. The results of path planning show that the modified A* algorithm has a search direction, which increases algorithm efficiency while guaranteeing low dose. The total cumulative dose of the route of the modified A* algorithm is better than that of the traditional A* algorithm and probabilistic road map method(PRM). The calculation results of the two models show that the modified A* algorithm is slightly lower than the traditional A* algorithm in terms of cumulative dose, which is reduced by 5.35% compared with the PRM algorithm. In terms of the number of algorithm execution points, the modified A* algorithm is 57.18% lower than the traditional A* algorithm on average. In terms of calculation time, the modified A* algorithm is 13.79% shorter than the traditional A* algorithm. The PRM algorithm has the shortest time, but the results of the PRM algorithm are random and unstable. The modified A* algorithm has the search direction under the premise of keeping the low dose, which improves the efficiency of the algorithm. Therefore, the modified A* algorithm can be used as an effective reference for staff path planning.