A Novel Local Motion Planning Framework for Autonomous Vehicles Based on Resistance Network and Model Predictive Control

• Published in: IEEE transactions on vehicular technology Vol. 69; no. 1; pp. 55 - 66
• Main Authors: Huang, Yanjun, Wang, Hong, Khajepour, Amir, Ding, Haitao, Yuan, Kang, Qin, Yechen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.01.2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Autonomous vehicle; Autonomous vehicles; Computer simulation; Human behavior; Lane changing; Lane keeping; model predictive control; Motion planning; Planning; Predictive control; Resistance; resistance network; Roads; Sliding mode control; super-twisting sliding mode motion tracker; Tracking; Trajectory; Trajectory planning; Twisting; Vehicles
• ISSN: 0018-9545; 1939-9359
• DOI: 10.1109/TVT.2019.2945934

This paper presents a novel local motion planning framework in a hierarchical manner for autonomous vehicles to follow a trajectory and agilely avoid obstacles. In the upper layer, a new path-planning method based on the resistance network is applied to plan behaviors (e.g. lane keeping or changing), where the human-like factors can be included to simulate different driver styles, such as the aggressive, moderate, and conservative. The planned results (i.e. the lane-change command and the local planned path) will guide the lower-layer planner to decide the local motion. In the lower layer, for the sake of simplicity and alleviation of the computational burden, two separate model predictive controllers (MPC) based on a point-mass kinematic model are utilized for both longitudinal and lateral motion planning. Finally, a super-twisting sliding mode controller (STSMC) based motion tracker is designed to show the feasibility of the proposed decoupled planning method and decide the desired control actions of autonomous vehicles. Several scenarios are defined to comprehensively test and demonstrate the effectiveness and the real-time applicability of the new motion-planning framework. The results show that the proposed method performs very well in the planning and tracking process and takes less than 25 ms for the whole planning process, which can be easily implemented in real-world applications.