Ground vehicle guidance along collision-free trajectories using elastic bands

Latest developments in automotive sensor technology promise an unbroken innovation thrust for driver assistance systems. Accordingly, future vehicles might be able to navigate autonomously. For autonomous vehicles collision avoidance systems (CAS) are essential. Key elements of CAS are automatic path planning, path following and model based estimation of the driving conditions of a CAS-equipped car. For this purpose, a path planning technique using modified elastic bands is presented. Furthermore, a possible overall CAS-structure including path following control and driving condition estimation is discussed. Finally, simulation results for an evasion maneuver are given.