Fast Shortest Path Polyline Smoothing With $G^{1}$ Continuity and Bounded Curvature

In this work, we propose the Dubins Path Smoothing (DPS) algorithm, a novel and efficient method for smoothing polylines in motion planning tasks. DPS applies to motion planning of vehicles with bounded curvature. In the letter, we show that the generated path: 1) has minimal length, 2) is $G^{1}$ continuous, and 3) is collision-free by construction, under mild hypotheses. We compare our solution with the state-of-the-art and show its convenience both in terms of computation time and of length of the compute path.

I. Introduction

Motion planning is a fundamental task for many applications, ranging from robotic arm manipulation [13] to autonomous vehicle navigation [9]. The goal is to find a feasible (or optimal) path or trajectory to move an agent from a start to a target position, avoiding obstacles.