<abstract> <p>The density peak clustering algorithm (DPC) requires manual determination of cluster centers, and poor performance on complex datasets with varying densities or non-convexity. Hence, a novel density peak clustering algorithm is proposed for the automatic selection of clustering centers based on K-nearest neighbors (AKDPC). First, the AKDPC classifies samples according to their mutual K-nearest neighbor values into core and non-core points. Second, the AKDPC uses the average distance of K nearest neighbors of a sample as its density. The smaller the average distance is, the higher the density. Subsequently, it selects the highest density sample among all unclassified core points as a center of the new cluster, and the core points that satisfy the merging condition are added to the cluster until no core points satisfy the condition. Afterwards, the above steps are repeated to complete the clustering of all core points. Lastly, the AKDPC labels the unclassified non-core points similar to the nearest points that have been classified. In addition, to prove the validity of AKDPC, experiments on manual and real datasets are conducted. By comparing the AKDPC with classical clustering algorithms and excellent DPC-variants, this paper demonstrates that AKDPC presents higher accuracy.</p> </abstract>