2-DIMENSIONAL MINIMUM-COST PATH PLANNING USING A CELLULAR-AUTOMATON ARCHITECTURE

A new algorithm for the estimation of the minimum cost path between a pair of points on a binary map and it's VLSI implementation, using a n ew, multi-state, 2-D Cellular Automata (CA) architecture, are presente d in this paper. The main advantages of the proposed architecture, whe n compared to already existing ones, are that storage requirements are reduced to a minimum and the speed of operation is very high, since n o internal memory transfer operations are required. A 4X4 module was d esigned to serve as the basic building block for the implementation of larger dimension architectures. The die size for this module is 5.81 mm 5.45 mm = 31.69 mm(2) and the speed of operation is 45 MHz.