Finding lowest-cost paths in settings with safe and preferred zones

Abstract

We define and study Euclidean and spatial network variants of a new path finding problem: given a set of safe or preferred zones with zero or low cost, find paths that minimize the cost of travel from an origin to a destination. In this problem, the entire space is passable, with preference given to safe or preferred zones. Existing algorithms for problems that involve unsafe regions to be avoided strictly are not effective for this new problem. To solve the Euclidean variant, we devise a transformation of the continuous data space with safe zones into a discrete graph upon which shortest path algorithms apply. A naive transformation yields a large graph that is expensive to search. In contr..