Improving and simplifying the generation of reference trajectories by usage of road-aligned coordinate systems

Short term motion planners for automated vehicles typically require a reference path as input to optimize the ride quality between distinct vehicle states. This paper presents a novel approach to simplify the generation of such reference paths. It is based on the idea of converting the driving route and all relevant objects from the current vehicle´s environment into a road-aligned coordinate system eliminating road´s curvature. Based on this, a suitable path using geometric primitives can be constructed, which is then converted back into the original coordinate system. When considered during generation, the resulting reference path guarantees to respect vehicle kinodynamics and is checked against collisions.