Computation of time optimal movements for autonomous parking of non-holonomic mobile platforms

We present a method for calculation of time optimal movements for parking of non-holonomic mobile platforms. The parking problem is considered as a specialization of the general problem of path planning for non-holonomic robots. This is formulated as a nonlinear optimal control problem and solved using advanced numerical methods. The concept of artificial potential field is used for accounting for the obstacles in the environment. This method allows us to compute the time optimal control for all possible parking configurations (parallel, diagonal, row parking). The experiments show that using this method the movements for different complex situations can be calculated in a timely fashion.