IS-A1-6

MAZE SOLVING AGENT

Generate rectangular mazes

What does this software do?

This software has been designed for our Intelligent Systems course laboratory sessions, in which we have designed and implemented an agent that, given a maze, and also a starting (it can be seen as the entry of the maze) cell and the final (it can be seen as the exit of the maze) cell, it is able to enter the maze and exit from it. It does not matter how large the maze is: it will exit from it if there exists a path connectin the entry of the maze with the exit.

Above, the problem this software solves, has been expressed without any theoretical terminology, but for our course, the concepts that are practiced by implementing this software are:

• Implementation of a search algorithm in a state space represented by the cells of the maze.

Which functionalities does this software have?

This software is used via command line, in which a menu with the functionalities that this software offers are presented. Through the development of this software, we have implemented the following features

1. Generate a random maze given the number of rows and columns of an hypothetic maze it exports it as a JSON file with all its data and a PNG image with the drawn maze.
2. Given a JSON file it checks if the maze is consistent and it as well exports the PNG image representing the maze.
3. Define a problem by providing a JSON file with the maze to be used in the problem.
4. Compare different data structures that were considered for the selection of a data structure used in the search algorithm called frontier. If you want to see these time comparions, just slect this option.
5. Give the file name of a JSON file containing a problem and a strategy to solve it among these five: BREADTH ; DEPTH ; UNIFORM ; GREEDY ; A and the software will solve the problem using this strategy providing:
   • A PNG image of the maze selected.
   • A PNG image coloured with the solution path in red.
   • A .txt file containing the solution path as a list of items called nodes.
6. Exit the program.

Libraries you need to install to run this program

Before running the program it is necessary to install two modules:

• pygame: python -m pip install -U pygame --user which is used to generate graphical representations of the mazes.
• colorama: python setup.py install --user or if you have pip pip install colorama --user to make a more friendly GUI.

NOTE: If you dont have superuser privileges you can use --user as stated above. Otherwise just type sudo <command> being <command> the command from the above you want to run.

How to run

The way of running this software is:

1. Clone this repository and move to it.

2. Move yourself into the folder maze-solving-agent using cd maze-solving-agent/ if you are using Linux OS or using the file explorer in Windows.

3. Execute the command python -B main.py. If you have installed Python 3.0.0 or a superior version, otherwise python3 -B main.py (check it with python --version)

4. Interact with the command line menu to select the option you desire to run form the above shown. In the folder test-files you have files to test the different functionalities of the program.