Path-Planning Strategy: Adaptive Ant Colony Optimization Combined with an Enhanced Dynamic Window Approach

Aiming to resolve the problems of slow convergence speed and inability to plan in real time when ant colony optimization (ACO) performs global path planning, we propose a path-planning method that improves adaptive ant colony optimization (IAACO) with the dynamic window approach (DWA). Firstly, the heuristic information function is modified, and the adaptive adjustment factor is added to speed up the algorithm’s convergence rate; secondly, elite ants and max–min ants systems are implemented to enhance the global pheromone updating process, and an adaptive pheromone volatilization factor is aimed at preventing the algorithm from enhancing its global search capabilities; then, the path optimization and withdrawal mechanism is utilized to enable smoother functioning and to avoid the deadlocks; finally, a new distance function is introduced in the evaluation function of DWA to the enhance real-time obstacle-avoidance ability. The simulation experiment results reveal that the path length of the IAACO can be shortened by 10.1% and 13.7% in contrast to the ACO. The iteration count can be decreased by 63.3% and 63.0%, respectively, leading to an enhanced optimization performance in global path planning and achieving dynamic real-time obstacle avoidance for local path planning.