The increasing demand for efficient parking lots in urban environments has intensified research into puzzle-based storage parking systems. However, this high-density approach introduces challenges related to optimizing retrieval time and determining efficient vehicle access paths. Research shows that standardized testing platforms are needed to enable fair comparisons of algorithmic approaches in the puzzle-based storage (PBS) field. This study introduces a comprehensive, modular, and free environment for the systematic evaluation of shortest-path algorithms within PBS problems. The paper provides a practical example of the environment’s application and outlines future development perspectives. Moreover, the article provides a comparative analysis of vehicle retrieval performance across a spectrum of scenarios, including variations in parking lot dimensions, occupancy densities, movement strategies (orthogonal versus octilinear), and input/output point configurations. Experiments reveal that grid size, storage density, and depot placement significantly influence retrieval efficiency, computational complexity, and solution optimality, which is consistent with the literature. This study demonstrates that the environment encompasses all essential elements for conducting research and allows reliable comparisons of results across various algorithm implementations.
Paszek et al. (Sat,) studied this question.