A Generic Path Planning Strategy for Autonomous Vehicles

Path planning is a necessary and fundamental component of any autonomous vehicle. The goal is to obtain a path that allows the vehicle to fullll its mission objectives by ensuring an eecient and safe path. Numerous path planning algorithms exist, although each is speciic to the type of vehicle that the algorithm is used on. This paper presents a path planning algorithm that is generic in nature so that it can be used by a variety of autonomous vehicles. The path planner generates a path composed of line segments using simple algebraic equations. Collision detection and avoidance is then performed on the individual line segments to ensure that the path is safe. The algorithm has various parameters that allow the planner to nd safe paths, eecient paths, and/or quickly generated paths. The path planner is a component of a larger general-purpose control architecture for autonomous vehicles called STESCA.