The Use of Bézier Curves for Optimal Motion Planning of Autonomous Vehicles

There are a wide range of techniques available for cooperative motion planning of autonomous vehicles. This paper focuses on one particular type of methods, known as Direct Methods, that solve motion planning expressed as a continuous-time optimal control problem. Out of all of the Direct Methods that were investigated, methods based on Bernstein polynomials were shown to provide the best results, namely, trajectories that prevent inter-vehicular and environmental collisions while satisfying vehicle constraints and keeping energy of temporal-related costs close to optimal.