Driverless Vehicle Path Planning Using Virtual Rays Without Sensors
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing navigation techniques for driverless vehicles focus primarily on collision avoidance or shortest paths without ensuring the path's safety, and they rely on multiple sensors, making the system complex.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that generate a safe navigation path by considering vehicle parameters like steering angle, turning radius, and inertia, tracing virtual rays to identify navigation points, and realigning or retracting paths to avoid obstacles without using sensors.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If existing navigation techniques focus on collision avoidance or shortest path, then the path planning is simplified, but the path safety cannot be ensured
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-calculating virtual rays from the source point to the destination point and identifying navigation points before actual vehicle movement. The system pre-determines safe paths by checking for obstacles along virtual rays in advance, rather than reacting to obstacles during vehicle movement. This allows the system to ensure path safety before the vehicle actually traverses the path.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces virtual rays as an intermediary element between the source point and destination point. These virtual rays serve as a mediating mechanism to detect obstacles and determine safe navigation points without requiring direct sensor detection during vehicle movement. The virtual rays act as a computational intermediary that simplifies the path planning while ensuring safety.
2Adaptability or versatility
If numerous sensors are used to navigate the AV, then the navigation capability is enhanced, but the overall system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the essential navigation function from complex sensor systems by using only the sensor data necessary for obtaining environmental information. Instead of relying on numerous sensors, the system extracts and processes only the critical environmental data needed to trace virtual rays and identify navigation points, thereby reducing system complexity while maintaining navigation capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a computational copy of the environment by tracing virtual rays through the spatial map rather than using physical sensors to continuously scan the environment. This virtual copying approach allows the system to navigate by processing pre-obtained environmental information, reducing the need for complex real-time sensor systems while maintaining navigation effectiveness.
Data Source
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AI summary
The present disclosure in the field of automobile engineering is a method and system for generating a safe navigation path for navigating a driverless vehicle. A path generating system receives one or more pre-generated paths between source point and destination point and an environmental data corresponding to each pre-generated path from one or more sources in real-time. Further, the path generating system identifies one or more navigation points in real-time based on the environmental data, vehicle capability characteristics and vehicle parameters by tracing virtual rays in a preconfigured angle range up to preconfigured distance from each of one or more originating points along each of the one or more pre-generated paths. Finally, the path generating system links the navigation points based on predefined techniques to generate the safe navigation path for navigating driverless vehicle. In the present disclosure, safe navigation path is generated without usage of any sensor.