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Intelligent Maze Solving Robot Based on Image Processing and Graph Theory
Algorithms

Conference Paper · October 2017

DOI: 10.1109/ICPET.2017.15

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 2017 International Conference on Promising Electronic Technologies

Intelligent Maze Solving Robot Based on Image

Processing and Graph Theory Algorithms
Mohammad O.A. Aqel, Ahmed Issa, Mohammed Khdair, Majde ElHabbash,
Mohammed AbuBaker, Mohammed Massoud
Department of Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology,
Al-Azhar University-Gaza,
Gaza P.O Box 1277, Palestine
m.aqel@alazhar.edu.ps, a.issa@alazhar.edu.ps, eng.mohammed.o.kh@gmail.com, majdereda3@gmail.com,
eng.mhabubaker@gmail.com, mohed_massoudd12@hotmail.com

Abstract— The most important task for maze solving robots is

the fast and reliable finding of its shortest path from its initial
point to its final destination point. This paper proposes an
intelligent maze solving robot that can determine its shortest path
on a line maze based on image processing and artificial
intelligence algorithms. The image of the line maze is captured by
a camera and sent to the computer to be analyzed and processed
by a program developed using Visual C++ and OpenCV libraries
and based on graph theory algorithms. The developed program
solves the captured maze by examining all possible paths exist in
the maze that could convey the robot to the required destination
point. After that, the best shortest path is determined and then
the instructions that guide the car-like robot to reach its desired
destination point are sent to the robot through Bluetooth. The
robot follows the received guide path to reach its destination. The
proposed approach works faster than the traditional methods
which push the robot to move through the maze cell by cell in
order to find its destination point. Moreover, the proposed
method allows the maze solving robot to avoid trapping and
falling in infinity loops. Applications of maze solving systems
include intelligent traffic control that helps ambulances, fire
fighters, or rescuing robots to find their shortest path to their
destination.
Keywords — maze solving; artificial intelligence; autonomous
robotic; graph theory algorithm; image processing.
I. INTRODUCTION
The rapid growth in the technology in our times is greater
than ever. Many autonomous robotic devices are invented to
make lives of people easier. Autonomous mobile robots to this
trend have a tremendous role and they can be the best option
for various and specific tasks. They can be deployed in the
industries for accurate and quick transportation of parts and
goods from one station to another. They have also been used
for rescuing to save lives and reach dangerous areas that
peoples cannot reach. Furthermore, mobile robots can be
implemented for home automation such as autonomous
vacuum cleaners which need to navigate itself in the house and
clean it at the same time.
For most mobile robot applications, path planning is an
important task. Any structure of multiple paths can be called a
maze [1]. A path between two specific locations existed in the
maze should be well planned and the planned path should be
collision-free and the shortest one. Applications of maze
solving systems include intelligent traffic control that helps
ambulances, fire fighters, or rescuing robots to find accurately
their shortest path to their destination.
The traditional technique that maze solving robots use is
based on trial and error which the robot should try each
available path in the maze until finding its destination point.
This traditional technique is a time consuming and could trap
the robot in infinite loops. Moreover, the traditional technique
does not always give the shortest path. The proposed approach
for maze solving avoids the aforementioned problems. It is an
intelligent technique based on image processing and artificial
intelligence algorithm that can reduce the maze solving time
and find the shortest path. The image of the entire maze is
captured by a camera and sent to the computer to be analyzed
and processed by a developed program using Visual C++ and
OpenCV libraries. The developed program is based on a graph
theory algorithm as one of the most efficient artificial
intelligent (AI) algorithms that can analyze mazes and find the
shortest path to the goal destination available in the maze.
There are many types of graph theory algorithms can be
used for maze solving. In order to find the best algorithm that
can solve the captured maze image, three types of graph theory
algorithms are implemented and tested which are Breadth First
Search , Best First Search and A* algorithms [2]. These
algorithms are tested on many mazes with variant complexity
and their results compared based on the required solving time
and the resulted path length from each method. Based on the
results, the Breadth First Search algorithm was the most
accurate one that find the shortest path for each tested maze.
Therefore, Breadth First Search algorithm was implemented in
the final developed maze solving program. Our evaluation has
proved that the proposed intelligent technique is fast and
efficient in solving any maze, whatever its complexity, and
allows the mobile robot to reach its destination point
accurately by following the shortest path.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses

978-1-5386-2269-8/17 $31.00 © 2017 IEEE 48

DOI 10.1109/ICPET.2017.15
previous related works. Section 3 describes the proposed
design of the system and its implementation. Section 4
presents and discusses the results of several experiments.
Finally, Section 5 summarizes the conclusions of this work.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
A maze is a journey puzzle consists
a confusing network of interconnected paths and hedges which
a solver must find a route from start point to the end point [1].
The process of finding a route through the maze from an initial
to final point is called maze solving. There are two main types
of maze solving methods. The first one depends on performing
the maze solving process inside the maze by a rover with no
prior knowledge about the details of the maze. The second
type of maze solving methods needs to employ a camera that
can capture the entire maze to be analyzed and solved
immediately through a program run on a computer [3].
There are many different maze solving algorithms have been
proposed in the literature. Most of researchers care of
development of algorithms can accurately and within short
time solve the maze by finding the shortest path between the
start and the end point. The simplest maze-solving technique is
the wall-follower technique based on left-hand rule or right-
hand rule. However, it can’t work well with complex mazes
and only can find the solution if the maze is simply connected,
that is, all its dividers are joined together [2,4].
In [5,6], path planning problem for mobile robot was solved
by implementing an Ant Colony Optimization ACO approach.
To solve this problem, many maps with different complexities
were implemented and each map was represented as grid of
equal number of rows and columns with starting and
destination point. As presented in this work, the robot found
the shortest path to its destination by avoiding obstacles and
walls. Another approach based on image processing was
proposed in [7]. In this approach an algorithm was developed
to examine the entire maze instead of an area of the current
position of robot. As the entire maze map is known to robot,
this approach provides robot the opportunity for preplanning
and avoids faults such as infinity loop or dead ends.
A maze-solving approach based on flood-fill algorithm was
proposed in [8] and it enhanced by skipping some steps not
needed in certain situations. This flood-fill technique depends
on the concept of water always flowing from a higher height to
a lower one and this concept is applied by assigning a value for
each cell in the maze that represents how far the cell is from
the center. The algorithm needs to perform four steps of maze-
solving which are updating the walls, flooding the maze,
determining which turn to be taken and moving to the next
cell. However, in some passages of the maze where the robot
is enforced to move only in straight forward direction, when
the robot is inside these passages, it is not required to perform
all four aforementioned algorithm steps. In this case, the
algorithm is enhanced by only flood the maze when there is a
turn and skipping the other steps in order to reduce execution
time.
There are maze-solving algorithms in literatures were
developed using graph theory algorithms such as Breadth First
Search, Best First Search and A* algorithms [2]. Breadth First
Search is a weighted graph search uses cost storage to
determine the order of cells visited [9]. It is able to find the
of shortest path by working in two phases: “the filling phase”, the
cells are marked and “the retrace phase”, uses a concept of
backtracking.
The approach proposed in this paper finds the shortest path
in maze from a start point to end destination point using image
processing and based on AI graph theory algorithms.
III. DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION
This section describes the design and implementation of an
intelligent maze-solving robotic system based on image
processing techniques and AI algorithms. The block diagram
of the proposed system is shown in Fig. 1. The system consists
of a mobile car-like robot, downward-facing camera mounted
above the maze, computer for processing and analyzing the
maze image using graph theory algorithms, and Bluetooth
module for communications between robot and computer.
The proposed method involves image processing and graph
theory algorithm; which works faster than traditional
techniques. The traditional techniques depend on performing
the maze solving process inside the maze by a rover moving
through the maze cell by cell with no prior knowledge about
the details of the maze. In the proposed system the entire
image of maze should be captured by a camera and then the
maze solving process is performed completely outside the
maze by a computer. The computer processes and analyses the
captured maze. The resulted maze solution which consists of
the shortest path data is sent to robot wirelessly for guiding it
to reach its target destination point accurately.
The process of the proposed maze-solving robotic system as
shown in Fig. 1 includes the following main steps:
A. Capturing of Maze Image
The process of maze-solving is started by capturing the top
view of the maze using a camera and the captured maze image
is saved in the desired folder in computer for further
Fig. 1. The proposed maze-solving robotic system.
49
processing. The camera should be calibrated in order to get its
intrinsic and extrinsic parameters. Camera calibration is a
necessary step in computer vision which provides the ability to
establish a relation between 2D image pixels coordinates and
real-world coordinates [10-12].
B. Preprocessing of Maze Image
This is an important step which involves image pre-
processing to prepare the maze image to be analyzed using one
of graph theory algorithms. This step includes image filtering
and detection of starting and end points of maze. The code is
developed using Visual C++ and OpenCV libraries. First, the
code imports the captured maze image and applies some filters
for image enhancement. After that and from the colored maze
image, the starting location and end location of the maze are
detected. The red colored line represents the starting location
or the maze entrance while the yellow colored line represents
the end location of maze or the maze exit gate as shown in Fig.
2. Finally and after detection of maze entrance and exit
locations and based on color intensity thresholds, the colored
image is converted into binary image as shown in Fig. 3 and
becomes ready for applying one of graph theory algorithms on
it as described in the next step.
C. Finding Shortest Path Using Graph Theory Algorithms
For solving the maze and finding the shortest path between
the starting and end points, three types of graph theory
algorithms are implemented and their results are compared in
order to select the best one. Breadth First Search, Best First
Search and A* algorithms are implemented and tested on
different simple and complex mazes and their results compared
based on the required solving time and the resulted path length
from each method. The goal of this comparison is to select the
best algorithm that can provide the shortest path with the least
Fig. 2. Original colored image of maze
Fig. 3. Converting colored image to binary image
based on thresholding
50
(2)
(2) (1) (2)
(2) (1) (0) (1) (2)
(2) (1) (2)
(2)
Fig. 4. Cell traversal manner using breadth first search.
time in order to be implemented in this proposed maze-solving
robotic system.
Breadth First Search is an algorithm for searching graph
data structures. It can be used for searching the maze cells or
nodes [13]. The job of this algorithm is to reach the goal cell
from the starting cell. It starts at starting cell of the maze and
explores the neighbor cells first before moving to the next
level neighbors. It uses cost storage to determine the order of
cells visited as shown in Fig. 4 and keeps records of which cell
are immediate neighbors of starting cell. Starting cell is
labeled as (0). The algorithm expands cells in order of their
distance from the starting cell, generating one level of the tree
at a time. It traverses the tree by layer through creating a list of
nodes/cells to traverse and adding the children of each node in
the list at the end of the generated list. This cell expanding
continues until finding the goal or the end cell. By this way,
the breadth-first search can find the shortest path to the goal
cell and the time required to find this path is proportional to
the number of cells generated as each cell can be generated in
constant time.
A* is a search algorithm that can be used in path-finding.
A* searches among all possible maze paths from start point to
end point in order to find the path that needs the smallest cost
according to the Equation (1) [14]:
f(n) = g(n) + h(n) (1)
where n is the last node on the path, h(n) is the distances to
each node from the goal node and g(n) is the path cost from
start node to n. A* starts from a specific node of a graph and
constructs a tree of paths starting from that node. It keeps
expanding paths one step at a time by taking the node with
least value of evaluation function f(n), until one of its paths
ends at the predetermined goal node (Fig. 5).
Best First Search algorithm can also be used for path
finding. To find the best path to the target destination node, at
each node of the graph it evaluates which node to be expanded
Fig. 5. A* algorithm sequence.
 Fig. 6. Best first search algorithm sequence. a. Maze 1 b. Solution of Breadth First Search
(Path: 31 steps, time: 3.2ms)
next based on the lowest cost using evaluation function which
measures the distance from the node in concern to the goal as
shown in Fig. 6 [14].
The graph theory algorithms are applied on the binary image
of maze to find the shortest solution path between starting
point and end point. The flowchart of the developed Visual
C++ code is shown in Fig. 7.

D. Converting the Shortest Path from Image Coordinates to
Real World coordinates and Sending it to Robot
The found shortest solution path is converted from pixel
coordinates (in pixels) to real world coordinates (in cm) by
applying a camera calibration processes using NI Vision
Assistant Module which powered by LabVIEW [15]. The
constructed path is translated to a guiding path to be sent to
robot through Bluetooth. The guiding path consists of group of
sequence instructions as translation distance in cm and
movement directions (turn right, turn left, move forward, and
move reverse). Finally, these guiding path instructions are
exported to text file and sent to the robot wirelessly via
Bluetooth to guide it through the maze to reach its final target
destination.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Several experiments have been conducted to evaluate the
accuracy of the developed maze-solving robot system. A
single consumer-grade 15 megapixel Logitech C920 webcam
has been employed in this system and mounted above the
c. Solution of Best First Search d. Solution of A* Search
(Path: 33 steps, time: 1.1ms) (Path: 33 steps, time: 2.8ms)
Fig. 8. Results of maze solving using AI search algorithms
maze. In the experiments conducted for this study a Lego
Mindstorms NXT2 Robot was used.
AI graph theory algorithms (Breadth First Search, Best First
Search, A* search) are tested on different mazes as shown in
Figs. 8 and 9. The solution path length and solving time are
computed from start point to the end point of each maze to
determine which algorithm is the most efficient in finding the
shortest path. Fig. 8 illustrates results of testing the three
algorithms on a maze. The blue cell and red cell represents the
start point and end point; respectively. The green cells
represent the resulted shortest solution path.
Based on Figs. 10 and 11, it is found that Breadth First
Search gives always the shortest path in all tested mazes and
Best First search was the fastest. Finally, because the most
important factor in maze solving systems is finding the

Import the captured maze image

Determine start and end point

Image thresholding a. Maze 2 b. Maze 3

Apply graph theory algorithm

Find the shortest path

Export path to text file and send to robot

c. Maze 4 d. Maze 5
Fig 7. Program flowchart.
Fig. 9. Different shape of mazes solved using AI search algorithms

51
 Fig. 10. Mazes solving time using AI search algorithms

Fig. 15. NXT2 Lego robot follows the received solution path

Fig. 11. Resulted solution-path length using AI search algorithms

shortest solution path, it is decided to implement the Breadth

First Search algorithm in the final maze-solving program as it
is the best algorithm that can generate the shortest solution
path and it has a good trade-off between processing time cost
and reliability of finding maze solutions.
The final code is written based on Breadth First Search
algorithms and developed to be able to process and analyze
any captured maze image in the real world. The developed
code is tested on different real mazes with variant complexity,
different solution paths, and different wall shapes (straight
walls and curved walls) as shown in Figs. 12 to 14. The
developed code was successfully able to solve these mazes
precisely and correctly with no missing ways or longer paths.
It always gives the shortest solution path for every tested
maze. The resulted solution path is sent to the NXT2 Lego
robot through Bluetooth as a guiding path for the robot to its
Fig. 16. Maze solving using wall-follower technique (left-hand rule)
final destination line as shown in Fig. 15. The maze in Fig. 15
is the same maze that was processed and analyzed and its
solution path is presented in Fig.13. The robot followed the
guiding path accurately and reached successfully to its final
destination line (yellow color) from its start line (red color).
The proposed intelligent approach was practically compared
with the traditional maze-solving method (wall-follower
technique based on left-hand rule) as shown in Fig. 16. It is

a. The captured maze before finding solution path a. The captured maze before finding solution path a. The captured maze before finding solution path

b. The maze after finding the solution path b. The maze after finding the solution path b. The maze after finding the solution path

Fig. 12. Simple maze with one solution Fig. 13. Maze with multiple solutions Fig. 14. Complex maze with multiple solutions

52
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The developed system determines the best path for a car-like
robot from its start position to its final destination position
while navigating through a real maze. In order to find the
shortest path, the whole image of maze is captured by a camera
and then processed and analyzed by the developed program
based on Breadth First Search algorithm. The resulted shortest
path data is sent to the robot through Bluetooth as a guiding
path to reach its target destination. The results proved that the
proposed intelligent technique is fast and efficient in solving
any maze, whatever its complexity, and allows the mobile
robot to reach its destination accurately through the shortest
path.
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