A Biochemistry-Inspired Algorithm for Path Planning in Unmanned Ground Vehicles

Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) have gained significant attention due to their extensive applications in both military and civilian sectors. For effective UGV deployment, path planning algorithms must prioritize computational efficiency, solution reliability, and runtime performance while maintaining path quality. Autonomous path planning remains a critical challenge in UGV navigation, as conventional methods, while effective, often suffer from considerable computational overhead. To address this issue, we propose a novel biochemistry-inspired path planning algorithm designed specifically for static grid-based scenarios. MetaPath demonstrates remarkable computational efficiency while maintaining solution quality across different obstacle densities in benchmark environments. Specifically, the algorithm achieves path lengths within ±5% of all benchmark algorithms while dramatically reducing the exploration space, visiting up to 10% of the cells explored by conventional approaches such as A*. This superior efficiency translates into exceptional runtime performance, executing up to 3000 times faster than bio-inspired algorithms like Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and the Genetic Algorithm (GA), performing nearly three times faster than the widely used A* algorithm, and maintaining competitive performance with efficient algorithms like Breadth-First Search (BFS) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), thereby establishing the algorithm as a highly efficient pathfinding solution. Most notably, MetaPath introduces a novel approach as the first chemistry-inspired pathfinding algorithm, guaranteeing path discovery when one exists within reasonable computational time, a crucial advantage over some benchmark algorithms that may fail to converge or require excessive computational resources in complex scenarios.