Path planning and evaluation in IVHS databases

An IVHS (Intelligent Vehicle Highway System) navigation system obtains information from road sensors, city maps and event schedules, and generates information for drivers. We address two aspects of navigation in IVHS: finding a path and evaluating a given path. Finding a path between a starting point and the destination is based on heuristic search procedures. Evaluation of a given path is modeled as a path query. We use a new access method, called MoBiLe File[18], for efficient map storage and access. We propose a hierarchical path planning algorithm which is capable of finding optimal paths while avoiding obstacles. We contribute obstacle avoidance heuristics for faster computation of paths between two points.