ENVIRONMENT-AWARE PATH PLANNING FOR A SELF-DRIVING VEHICLE USING DYNAMIC STEP-SIZE SEARCH

A system and method of planning a path for an autonomous vehicle from the vehicle's initial configuration to the goal configuration which is collision-free, kinematically-feasible, and near-minimal in length. The vehicle is equipped with a plurality of perception sensors such as lidar, camera, etc., and is configured to operate in an autonomous mode. An onboard computing device is configured to process the sensor data and provide a dynamic occupancy grid map of the surrounding environment in real-time. Based on the occupancy grid map, the path planner can quickly calculate a collision-free and dynamically feasible path towards the goal configuration for the vehicle to follow.