Curvature-continuous trajectory generation with corridor constraint for autonomous ground vehicles

We present a practical path planning algorithm based on Bézier curves for autonomous vehicles operating under waypoints and corridor constraints. Bézier curves have useful properties for the trajectory generation problem. This paper describes how the algorithm apply these properties to generate the reference trajectory for vehicles to satisfy the path constraints. The algorithm generates the piecewise-Bézier-curves path such that the curves segments are joined smoothly with C² constraint which leads to continuous curvature along the path. The degree of the curves are minimized to prevent them from being numerically unstable. Additionally, we discuss the constrained optimization problem that optimizes the resulting path for a user-defined cost function.