Autonomous vehicle with freespace planner

Abstract

Planning, or path finding is one of many tasks performed by an autonomous vehicle (AV). Planning involves searching for and updating an optimal plan from a current pose to an end pose while avoiding obstacles. Planning can be particularly challenging in driving scenarios involving complex driving maneuvers, such as parking, making a U-turn, making a K-turn, etc. Searching for an optimal plan may take more time, e.g., a few seconds, in certain driving scenarios. Consumers of the plan may have a low tolerance for delay in receiving the optimal plan. A relay can be implemented to publish the latest plan to the consumers at a frequency. The relay can check whether the delay violates a dynamic threshold and raise an error accordingly. The searching process can be improved to reduce the delay in finding an optimal plan.