Analytic error variance predictions for planar vehicles

Path planning algorithms that incorporate risk and uncertainty need to be able to predict the evolution of path-following error statistics for each candidate plan. We present an analytic method to predict the evolving error statistics of a holonomic vehicle following a reference trajectory in a planar environment. This method is faster than integrating the plant through time or performing a Monte Carlo simulation. It can be applied to systems with external Gaussian disturbances, and it can be extended to handle plant uncertainty through numerical quadrature techniques.