A Short and Direct Walk with Pascal's Triangle

Classic pathfinding algorithms like Dijkstra's Algorithm and A* are used to generate travel routes in applications such as video games, mobile robotics, and architectural design. Despite the popularity of these algorithms, the paths they produce rarely go straight. In this article, you'll learn how to compute highly direct paths using a counting technique inspired by Pascal's Triangle. It's an idea my colleagues and I developed and recently published in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research [1]. With the simple step of counting paths, you can overcome a long-standing problem with traditional pathfinding.