Section: Scientific Foundations

Path planning and trajectory generation

Participants : Laurent Bouraoui, Fawzi Nashashibi, Plamen Petrov, Paulo Lopes Resende, Clément Boussard, Cristian Sandu.

We tackle two main topics: robot (or vehicle) control and path planning.

Control addresses the command system designed to execute at best the orders given by either the driver (assisted by the system) or the automated driving system (the co-pilot). The command system sends orders to the mechanical parts of the vehicles using all the information raised by the sensors or coming from path planner or an advanced co-pilot.

The real difficulty with this kind of control comes from the complexity of the dynamic behavior of the vehicle: response are highly non linear, particularly the response to forces of the tires on various soils. INRIA has a great expertise in these control problems and IMARA already demonstrated solutions for automatic driving of platoons of electrical cars. This research is still an active field. We recently designed and integrated a modular control architecture dedicated to the Cycabs. The system's low level is based on a DSPIC architecture while the system management and core system integrates the Syndex system developed by the AOSTE project-team.

From the modeling point of view, we want to enhance the system concerning the speed, the variety of wheel-soil contact. The lateral control problem is also studied, particularly in view of drivers assistance. This is studied jointly with our LaRA partners (Robotics Center of ENSMP).

Path planning is another aspect of command systems dedicated to the generation of correct trajectories for an autonomous mobile robot (Cycabs) and for the autonomous mode of a vehicle. We currently work on a generic planner capable of finding secure trajectories for both robots and intelligent vehicles.

Associated projects: Sharp, Icare, Sosso, E-Motion.