Risk-A^* path planning algorithm for Arctic shipping

The traditional A^* algorithm does not take into account the navigation risk factors brought by sea ice and cannot be directly applied to the Arctic ship path planning. To solve this problem, this paper introduces the POLARIS risk model, builds the Arctic navigation risk model and navigation risk map by analyzing the gridded sea ice density and sea ice thickness data, improves the traditional A^* algorithm by adding risk function and optimizing heuristic function, and proposes Risk-A^* path planning algorithm to achieve the optimal route planning under different preferences of risk and efficiency. The simulation results show that Risk-A^* path planning algorithm has greater advantages over traditional algorithms in terms of route length, number of risk waters crossed, etc.,and can provide safe and efficient routes for ships navigating in the Arctic.