OPTIMAL VELOCITY PLANNING FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES UNDER KINEMATIC CONSTRAINTS

The use of smooth command signals for the control of autonomous vehicles guarantees moderate travelling solicitations and better wheels grip. To achieve command smoothness, the vehicle longitudinal velocity must be continuous and differentiable. For this reason, a scheme for the real-time optimal velocity planning is proposed in this paper. A continuously differentiable profile, which satisfies assigned interpolating conditions, is generated by means of an optimization program which minimizes the longitudinal jerk. The resulting velocity function and its first derivative are constrained between assigned bounds.