V-STC: A Time-Efficient Multi-Vehicle Coordinated Trajectory Planning Approach
This work addresses the need for efficient and safe coordination of multiple autonomous vehicles, offering a time-saving improvement over prior STC-based methods.
The paper introduces V-STC, a variable-time-step spatio-temporal corridor approach for multi-vehicle trajectory planning that reduces temporal occupancy by optimizing both spatial configuration and time durations, achieving safer and more time-efficient coordination compared to existing STC methods.
Coordinating the motions of multiple autonomous vehicles (AVs) requires planning frameworks that ensure safety while making efficient use of space and time. This paper presents a new approach, termed variable-time-step spatio-temporal corridor (V-STC), that enhances the temporal efficiency of multi-vehicle coordination. An optimization model is formulated to construct a V-STC for each AV, in which both the spatial configuration of the corridor cubes and their time durations are treated as decision variables. By allowing the corridor's spatial position and time step to vary, the constructed V-STC reduces the overall temporal occupancy of each AV while maintaining collision-free separation in the spatio-temporal domain. Based on the generated V-STC, a dynamically feasible trajectory is then planned independently for each AV. Simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed method achieves safe multi-vehicle coordination and yields more time-efficient motion compared with existing STC approaches.