• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.129-137
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• 2010

Currently used shortest path search algorithms involve graphs with vertices and weighted edges between each vertex. However, when finding the shortest path with a randomly shaped obstacle(an island, for instance) positioned in between the starting point and the destination, using such algorithms involves high memory inefficiency and is significantly time consuming - all positions in the map should be considered as vertices and every line connecting any of the two adjacent vertices should be considered an edge. Therefore, we propose a new method for finding the shortest path in such conditions without using weighted graphs. This algorithm will allow finding the shortest obstacle bypass given only the positions of the obstacle boundary, the starting point and the destination. When the row and column size of the minimum boundary rectangle to include an obstacle is m and n, respectively, the proposed algorithm has the maximum time complexity, O(mn). This performance shows the proposed algorithm is very efficient comparing with the currently used algorithms.