A* and Dijkstra

The videos on this page illustrate A* and Dijkstra running on a variety of small graphs. They are well suited for class demonstration; the individual frames of each animation can be downloaded and used for teaching purposes.

Download movie frames (jpg format, 3.8MB, 1600x800 resolution)

NOTE: These videos are now available as interactive demos.

Dijkstra on simple graph

Dijkstra on more complicated graph

Dijkstra on another more complicated graph

A* on the same simple graph as above. Note that the edge costs are much larger than the heuristics, so the heuristic is highly ineffective on this problem.

A* on the same simple graph with edge costs that do a better job of mirroring the heuristic values.

A* on the same graph for Dijkstra as above, for comparison purposes