Autonomous Vehicle Navigation for Robust On-Road Driving

This paper describes some of the advances that are being made in the use of autonomous vehicles for on-road driving. The authors note that, historically, autonomous vehicles have been mostly used in military applications. They stress that for a driverless vehicle to safely navigate on the same roadways as other driverless vehicles as well as with human-driven vehicles, its behavior will need to be generated appropriately and robustly. Autonomous vehicle navigation for on-road driving consists of tasks ranging from steering and speed control to negotiating complex urban environments with stop signs, traffic lights, other vehicles, and pedestrians. The authors describe the Southwest Safe Transport Initiative (SSTI), developed by the Southwest Research Institute (SwR), a project to investigate the development and commercialization of vehicle autonomy as well as the vehicle-based telemetry systems necessary to improve safety and facilitate traffic flow. This paper discusses the modularized approach used to perform the navigation and path planning tasks for on-road driving that have been implemented on the SSTI autonomous vehicle. The authors report details of the global route planning, local path planning, speed profile generation, and the use of planning paths for lane changing and obstacle avoidance. The system consists of a long-term route planner to create a route to the destination, and a short-term path planner that considers passenger comfort and safety. Tying the two planners together is a supervisory system that switches the behavior of the vehicle based on situational input to perform basic on-road driving maneuvers.

• Corporate Authors:

  ITS America

  1100 17th Street, NW, 12th Floor
  Washington, DC  United States  20036
• Authors:
  • McWilliams, George
  • Kozak, Kristopher
• Conference:
  • 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems and ITS America's 2008 Annual Meeting
  • Location: New York NY, United States
  • Date: 2008-11-16 to 2008-11-20
• Publication Date: 2008

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: Figures; Maps; Photos; References;
• Pagination: 12p
• Monograph Title: ITS Connections: Saving Time. Saving Lives

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Advanced driver information systems; Automated vehicle control; Highway safety; Intelligent vehicles; Itinerary; Navigation systems; Proximity detectors; Speed control; Steering; Technological innovations; Traffic flow; Transportation planning
• Identifier Terms: Southwest Safe Transport Initiative
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Vehicles and Equipment; I91: Vehicle Design and Safety;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01138574
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Aug 19 2009 1:49PM