Hiking Path Finder

Through the advancement of satellite technology, terrain elevation data has become widely available on the internet from various public and private sources. The data gives the elevation for each latitude, longitude point for a specified region on a map. This data can be retrieved for any area, including mountains in your local town. The problem this project aims to solve is finding the most efficient path from one point in a region to another given that regions' elevation data. This is important information for when you are back country camping and there are no man made paths so you must instead blaze your own path. Picking an efficient path is critical because you need to carry your own food and water, which are both heavy and limited. Therefore optimizing the distance and work required to reach your destination is vital to the success and safety of the trip. Also another important factor to consider is the steepness of the path because if the gradient is too large you might not be able to traverse the terrain. This effectively acts as a wall for the search problem, blocking the agent. Therefore with the above mentioned factors, the goal of this project is to use path finding algorithms to find the most efficient hikable path through a region for a hiker.