Path Planning for Automotive Collision Avoidance based on Elastic Bands

Authors:	Brandt Thorsten, University of Paderborn, Germany Sattel Thomas, University of Paderborn, Germany
Topic:	4.2 Mechatronic Systems
Session:	Automotive Mechatronics
Keywords:	obstacle avoidance, path planning, automotive control, autonomous vehicles, vehicle dynamics

Abstract

Collision-free path planning will be an essential feature of future automotive collision avoidance systems (CAS). One of the most promising approaches uses so-called elastic bands in generating emergency trajectories. For the automotive application of this approach, moving obstacles and the borders of the road are modeled by virtual potential fields. To find solutions even in complex driving situations, the concept of computing several possible trajectories instead of just one is introduced. The stability of a vehicle traveling along these trajectories is estimated based on a model. A suitable estimation method and sample simulation results are given.