Problem
You as an autonomous systems engineer have obtained access to a power plant's floorplan (map) which is in the form of rectangular grid. In the map, each location is annotated with 0 and
Locations annotated with a 0 can be entered and traversed, whereas locations annotated with a 1 are inaccessible. Each action (moving from one cell to an adjacent cell) incurs a cost of 1.
The robot has been dropped at the location (4,4) marked as ``source'' and must reach the "goal" which is at location (0,0).
Due to the hazardous situation, the robot should traverse the path
(source->goal) as quickly as possible. The robot's movements are restricted to the four primary directions: North, South, East, and West, (diagonal movement of the robot is not allowed) and the robot must stay within the bounds of the map.
Task
A. Present a mathematical formulation for the path planning problem described above.
B. Write the pseudocode and flowchart of the AI search algorithm (uninformed or informed) which you will employ for the stated path planning problem.
C. Construct a data generation framework which will produce the output grid-based floorplan (map) of a hypothetical power plant.
D. Based on the map created in question 3, write a MATLAB program that uses the AI search algorithm for the above path planning problem. If there are multiple shortest paths for a given map and agent, it is sufficient if your program finds one of the paths.
Design a suitable heuristic function for your algorithm. The path planning program must calculate the path (print the path coordinates) and the total path cost. The MATLAB program (code) should be properly annotated with a clear description (logic) of each part.