Dynamic Route Optimization using A* Algorithm with Heuristic Technique for a Grocery Store

摘要

A grocery store is a place where people can buy food items. As time goes by, grocery stores become bigger with increasing number of variety of items they offer and people tend to use more time and energy when looking for items in their grocery list. This study aims to develop a system that maps the shortest path needed by buyers when they go to groceries, to give the user the freedom to alter the list and to recalculate the best path to take to save time using A* (A-star) algorithm. The system was tested using a pseudo grocery store that imitated the layout of a real grocery store using two experimental set-ups, for unaltered and altered grocery lists, with ten trials for each set-up. The study was successful because the shortest map to follow was generated by the system. When the user altered the grocery list, the system recalculated the shortest path and generated a new map. Initial results showed the system greatly reduced the distance covered to improvement for the unaltered list and 89.71% improvement for the altered list.