Speed based guidance improves one-step dynamic vehicle navigation
SCET-CBF: Speed-Calibrated Soft Guidance for One-Step Dynamic Navigation
Robotics
Summary
Vehicles often struggle to avoid crashes when many moving obstacles surround them at once, and their steering limits make quick turns hard. The authors propose a new method that combines speed control with steering choices to better navigate tight spaces. Their approach lets vehicles slow down and move sideways early to create more time and space for safe turns. Tests show it helps vehicles complete more navigation tasks on time compared to other approaches.
What this means in practice
- •For autonomous vehicle engineers: Improve vehicle navigation software to handle dense dynamic obstacles using speed-calibrated control to increase task completion rates under steering constraints.
- •For robotics system integrators: Integrate advanced one-step guidance control for robots to better manage collision avoidance with limited steering and acceleration options.
Authors
Xiaoyu Han, Dongkun Han
Abstract
Control barrier functions (CBFs) support collision avoidance, yet dense dynamic encounters can leave a vehicle with no feasible command. Geometric refinements and soft constraints help preserve motion choices. Using these choices also requires accounting for the vehicle's changing turning response. For a steering-limited bicycle, braking can lower closing speed while slowing the lateral motion needed before an obstacle arrives. We propose SCET-CBF, a speed-calibrated soft guidance law for one-step dynamic navigation. A short lateral escape maneuver gives an allowable approach speed. Its speed derivative allows a quadratic program to weigh both effects of braking when choosing acceleration and steering. Soft penalties accommodate competing obstacle preferences within the input set permitted by segment and braking constraints. We derive the guidance and establish protection over each accepted motion segment, together with conditional braking invariance for a single obstacle. On 2500 paired tasks with a 60 s deadline, SCET achieves 72.8% completion, compared with 49.8% for CBF/velocity-obstacle control and 69.8% for an enhanced 1 s CBF-MPC. At 100 obstacles, SCET and the enhanced MPC complete 52.4% and 33.6% of tasks. Paired studies identify the contributions of speed feedback and early activation. Further evaluations examine the operating range under lateral acceleration limits and bounded motion and execution errors.