AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE WITH FREESPACE PLANNER

Planning, or path finding is one of many tasks performed by an autonomous vehicle (AV). Planning involves searching for and updating an optimal plan from a current pose to an end pose while avoiding obstacles. Planning can be particularly challenging in driving scenarios involving complex driving maneuvers, such as parking, making a U-turn, making a K-turn, etc. Searching for an optimal plan may take more time, e.g., a few seconds, in certain driving scenarios. Consumers of the plan may have a low tolerance for delay in receiving the optimal plan. A relay can be implemented to publish the latest plan to the consumers at a frequency. The relay can check whether the delay violates a dynamic threshold and raise an error accordingly. The searching process can be improved to reduce the delay in finding an optimal plan.