Trajectory Generation using Sharpness Continuous Dubins-like Paths with Applications in Control of Heavy-Duty Vehicles

We present a trajectory generation framework for control of wheeled vehicles under steering actuator constraints. The motivation is smooth driving of autonomous heavy-duty vehicles, which are characterized by slow actuator dynamics. In order to deal with the slow dynamics, we take into account rate and, additionally, torque limitations of the steering actuator directly. Previous methods only take into account limitations in the path curvature, which deals indirectly with steering rate limitations. We propose the new concept of Sharpness Continuous curves, which uses cubic curvature paths together with circular arcs to steer the vehicle. The obtained paths are characterized by a smooth and continuously differentiable steering angle profile. The final trajectories computed with our method provide low-level controllers with reference signals which are easier to track, resulting in improved performance. The smoothness of the obtained steering profiles also results in increased passenger comfort. The method is characterized by fast computation times. We detail possible path planning applications of the method, and conduct simulations that show its advantages and real-time capabilities.