A multi-strategy improved sparrow search algorithm for mobile robots path planning

Abstract Path planning for mobile robots plays a vital role in task execution, given the constraints imposed by environments and energy resources. It poses a significant challenge for mobile robots, requiring them to find a feasible path between the start point and target point that is obstacle-free and as short as possible. To address the challenge of path planning, a multi-strategy improved sparrow search algorithm with chaos operator (CMISSA) is proposed. Firstly, Tent chaos mapping and reverse learning are introduced into the population initialization of sparrow search algorithm (SSA) to enhance the uniformity and effectiveness of the initial population distribution. Secondly, adaptive parameters are applied in SSA to maintain a balance between exploitation and exploration. Thirdly, to prevent SSA from getting trapped in local optima, the chaos operator is used to perturb the population position. Finally, a novel adaptive boundary control strategy is introduced to handle the location of individuals that have crossed the boundary. In addition, the experimental results on 15 classical benchmark functions show that CMISSA has better optimization performance than other 10 comparison algorithms. Furthermore, in the path planning experimental results, the results of comparing CMISSA with 5 comparison algorithms on 5 different environments reveal CMISSA’s average path shortening rates were 34.90%, 20.11%, 29.01%, 51.97%, 37.42%, respectively. It is further demonstrated that CMISSA has superior availability for solving mobile robots path planning.