Safe but Not Overcautious Motion Planning under Occlusions and Limited Sensor Range

Abstract

For a successful introduction of fully automated vehicles, they must behave both provably safe but also convenient, i.e. comfortable and not overcautious. Given the limited sensing capabilities, especially in urban scenarios where buildings and parking vehicles impose occlusions, this is a challenging task. While recent approaches gave first ideas for boundary conditions of safe behavior, an approach for convenient motion planning that fulfills these constraints is still remaining. Therefore, we utilize and enhance given safety approaches for occlusion handling in order to facilitate comfortable and safe motion planning. In order to do so, we consider worst case assumptions, arising from potential objects at critical sensing field edges, along with their probability. With this information, we can ensure to not act overcautiously while still moving provably safe. The potential of our approach is shown in a modified CommonROAD scenario.