A path planning method with specification of curvatures of boundary conditions based on clothoidalal curve elements

Abstract

Path planning is essential for the autonomous driving or advanced driver assistance systems. Efficiency and ride comfort of vehicles is achieved by path planning using smooth reference paths where there is no discontinuity. If we want to ensure the continuity at the connecting points of sequentially generated paths, it is necessary that the curvature at the endpoints of each paths can be specified. In this research, the method to generate such a smooth path is proposed. The proposed paths are composed of three clothoid curves, which have same length and are connected with no discontinuity of curvatures and tangent angles. It is shown that the proposed method can generate a path in at most a few iterations and that the path can be easily tracked by using curvature information. A discussion of preferable combinations of path generating method and path tracking method is also given.

Keywords

• autonomous driving vehicle
• path plannig
• clothoid curve
• curvature specification
• path tracking