Optimal acceleration-bounded trajectory planning in dynamic environments along a specified path

Vehicles that cross lanes of traffic encounter the problem of navigating around dynamic obstacles under actuation constraints. This paper presents an optimal, exact, polynomial-time planner for optimal bounded-acceleration trajectories along a fixed, given path with dynamic obstacles. The planner constructs reachable sets in the path-velocity-time (PVT) space by propagating reachable velocity sets between obstacle tangent points in the path-time (PT) space. The terminal velocities attainable by endpoint-constrained trajectories in the same homotopic class are proven to span a convex interval, so the planner merges contributions from individual homotopic classes to find the exact range of reachable velocities and times at the goal. A reachability analysis proves that running time is polynomial given reasonable assumptions, and empirical tests demonstrate that it scales well in practice and can handle hundreds of dynamic obstacles in a fraction of a second on a standard PC.