An offline path planning method for autonomous vehicles

Abstract

Driving a road vehicle is a very complex task in terms of controlling it, substituting a human driver with a computer is a real challenge also from the technical side. An important step in vehicle controlling is when the vehicle plans its own trajectory. The input of the trajectory planning are the purpose of the passengers and the environment of the vehicle. The trajectory planning process has several parts, for instance, the geometry of the path-curve or the speed during the way. Furthermore, a traffic situation can also determine many other parameters in the planning process. This paper presents a basic approach for trajectory design. To reach the aim a map will be given as a binary 2204 x 1294 size matrix where the roads will be defined by ones, the obstacles will be defined by zeros. The aim is to make an algorithm which can find the shortest and a suitable way for vehicles between the start and the target point. The vehicle speed will be slow enough to ignore the dynamical properties of the vehicle. The research is one of the first steps to realize automated parking features in a self-drive car.