Lane change path planning based on piecewise Bezier curve for autonomous vehicle

Autonomous vehicle is an efficient component in vehicle active system to reduce traffic accidents. The path planning of lane change for autonomous vehicle is an important component in the autonomous vehicle field. In order to generate a path for passing the front vehicle, a new path planning method that is curvature-continuous and satisfies the vehicle nonholonomic constraint is introduced. Firstly, we calculate the safe lane change distance for autonomous vehicle. Secondly, we generate the path based on piecewise quadratic Bezier curve and the maximum curvature of the Bezier curves is calculated to verify whether the autonomous vehicle can follow this path. Then, we present the indicator based on yaw-rate of vehicle to verify the vehicle ride comfort. The experiment results show that the path generated by this method can be successfully executed by autonomous vehicle, the curvature of the path is continuous, meanwhile vehicle nonholonomic and ride comfort indicator constraint condition is met.