Path Planning, Replanning, and Execution for Autonomous Driving in Urban and Offroad Environments

Abstract

We present an autonomous driving system that iscapable of planning, replanning, and executing paths for drivingin urban and offroad environments. For planning, we rely onthe E algorithm which computes a smooth navigation functionthat takes into account traversibility information extracted fromlaser scans. The path execution algorithm is centered arounda kinodynamic controller which follows the gradient of thenavigation function. This work is based on prior experience withthe SmartTer vehicle, which we are in the process of updating,and the focus is on integration.