Tractor-Trailer Vehicle Trajectory Planning in Narrow Environments With a Progressively Constrained Optimal Control Approach

Trajectory planning for a tractor-trailer vehicle is challenging due to the non-convex collision avoidance constraints and the unstable kinematics. This article aims to plan precise and optimal trajectory for a car-like tractor that tows standard or general N-trailers in an environment with static obstacles. This trajectory planning scheme can be formulated as a unified optimal control problem, but numerically solving that problem is difficult. Two efforts are made to address the difficulty. First, an extended hybrid A* search algorithm is proposed to provide an initial guess for the numerical optimization. Second, the numerical optimization process is eased through adopting a progressively constrained optimization strategy, which is about sequentially handling the kinematics, collision avoidance constraints, and boundary conditions. Particularly in dealing with the collision avoidance constraints, an adaptively homotopic warm-starting algorithm is proposed, which defines a sequence of subproblems with the obstacle areas adaptively increase towards their nominal scales. Through solving these subproblems in a sequence, the whole collision avoidance difficulties are dispersed and gradually tackled. Comparative simulations are conducted to validate the efficacy of the proposed trajectory planner.

• Record URL:
  http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TIV.2019.2960943
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/23798858
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Copyright © 2020, IEEE.
• Authors:
  • Li, Bai
  • Acarman, Tankut
  • Zhang, Youmin
  • Zhang, Liangliang
  • Yaman, Cagdas
  • Kong, Qi
• Publication Date: 2020-9

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: References;
• Pagination: pp 414-425
• Serial:
  • IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles
  • Volume: 5
  • Issue Number: 3
  • Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
  • ISSN: 2379-8858
  • Serial URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=7274857

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Constraints; Crash avoidance systems; Kinematics; Obstructions (Navigation); Optimization; Tractor trailer combinations; Trajectory; Trajectory control
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01752974
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Sep 25 2020 5:30PM