dubins

This software finds the shortest paths, and related information, between configurations for the Dubins’ car - a vehicle model that describes a kinematic two-dimensional model of a car that can only drive forward, or turn with a bounded turning radius.

The Dubins’ car was originally described L. E. Dubins in [Dubins57], and is important tool for demonstrating concepts in robotics including path planning subject to non-holonomic constraints.

The method used to find paths is based on the algebraic solutions published in [Shkel01]. However, rather than using angular symmetries to improve performance, the simpler approach of testing all candidate solutions is used here.

References

[Dubins57]Dubins, L.E. (July 1957). “On Curves of Minimal Length with a Constraint on Average Curvature, and with Prescribed Initial and Terminal Positions and Tangents”. American Journal of Mathematics 79 (3): 497–516
[Shkel01]Shkel, A. M. and Lumelsky, V. (2001). “Classification of the Dubins set”. Robotics and Autonomous Systems 34 (2001) 179–202