Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "A* search algorithm" in English language version.
One of the first problems we considered was how to plan a sequence of 'way points' that Shakey could use in navigating from place to place. […] Shakey's navigation problem is a search problem, similar to ones I have mentioned earlier.
Bertram Raphael, who was directing work on Shakey at that time, observed that a better value for the score would be the sum of the distance traveled so far from the initial position plus my heuristic estimate of how far the robot had to go.