Bounded velocity planning for autonomous vehicles

The path-velocity decomposition scheme is frequently adopted in the context of trajectory planning. A technique for the optimal velocity planning, to be used that framework, is proposed in this paper. Differentiable velocity profiles, which fulfil assigned initial and final boundary conditions on the velocity itself and on its first derivative, are obtained by means of the proposed strategy. Moreover, profiles are constrained between assigned bounds, i.e. velocity is limited, and its second derivative (the longitudinal jerk) is minimized by means of an optimization algorithm. The extensive use of closed form expressions makes this approach suitable to be implemented in real-time applications.