An Efficient Trajectory Planning Approach for Tractor-Trailer Vehicles Using Convex Polygonal Corridor Construction in Narrow Environments

Trajectory planning for tractor-trailer vehicles is a complex and challenging problem, especially in narrow environments. After the trajectory planning problem is formulated as an optimal control problem, it becomes complicated due to the high-dimensional vehicle motion, which leads to complex nonlinear kinematic constraints in the optimal control problem. Additionally, non-convex collision-avoidance constraints constructed in complex environments require a lot of computational resources. Further, the solution is sensitive to the quality of the initial solution. To address these issues, we propose a penalty iterative optimization method based on an efficient construction of convex polygonal corridors in static environments for tractor-trailer vehicles. Dynamic detection regions are designed during corridor construction to enhance the safety and adaptability of corridors. Additionally, constraints within the corridors are formulated to serve as collision-avoidance constraints, maximizing the utilization of free space and mitigating the impact of environmental complexity. To overcome the difficulties of solving nonlinear constraints directly and the sensitivity of the initial solution, we employ a penalty iterative optimization framework that transforms nonlinear constraints into cost penalties and iteratively reconstructs corridors to optimize the trajectory. Simulation results show that the proposed method has obvious advantages in computational efficiency and trajectory quality.