(Zips et al., 2016), they present improvements to the
algorithm for a path planning outside the parking slot.
Our paper differs in the problem definition. We con-
sider the parallel parking slot – not the goal position –
as the input. Our approach guarantees the optimality
of entry positions as opposed to the phase switching
point.
(Vorobieva et al., 2015) present three algorithms
for geometric parking: (1) The algorithm for parking
in one maneuver computes path from the goal posi-
tion by simulating forward movement with the max-
imum steering. This algorithm works only for long
enough parking slots. (2) Parking in several paral-
lel trials algorithm starts by computing the path from
initial position to some position partially inside the
parking slot with the constraint of the car heading be-
ing parallel to the parking slot heading. Then, the
algorithm continues by simulating forward-backward
moves toward the parking slot with the constraint of
the car heading being parallel to the parking slot head-
ing when the car stops for the direction change. (3)
Parking algorithm called several reversed trials gen-
eralize the algorithm for parking in one maneuver. It
computes the path in the reverse order to the park-
ing process: the algorithm starts from the goal po-
sition and computes the path by simulating forward-
backward moves with the maximum steering until the
car leaves the parking slot.
(Li and Tseng, 2016) propose complete system for
automated parking. Their planning algorithm com-
putes a path for a parallel parking slot from three cir-
cle segments. The initial position is considered a part
of the input to the algorithm and only one (backward)
move is allowed.
The works above describe a geometric planner to
find a path between initial and goal position. In this
paper, we also use the geometric approach. How-
ever, we consider entry and goal positions as the re-
sult, which allows us to guarantee that the car can
park from entry positions into the parking slot with
the minimum number of backward-forward direction
changes. Path planning from initial to entry position
is out of scope this paper.
(Li et al., 2016) present dynamic optimization
framework for computing a time-optimal maneuvers
for parallel parking. They compute trajectory from
initial position to any parked position, i.e., a position
of a car when the car is completely inside the parking
slot. Compared to our approach, we do not consider
the time. However, we compute a set of entry posi-
tions and return it as the result.
To solve the path planning problem of parallel
parking for automated vehicle, (Jing et al., 2018)
introduce nonlinear programming optimization that
minimizes multiple objectives such as path length,
distance from the car front to the parking slot front,
and the distance from the car center to the parking slot
center. The initial position of the car is fixed and only
one (backward) move is allowed. In this paper, we
allow multiple backward-forward direction changes,
but we minimize their count.
2 PARALLEL PARKING
PROBLEM
We define the used terminology and the parallel park-
ing problem in this section.
2.1 Definitions
Car position is a tuple C = (x, y,θ,s,φ), where x and
y are cartesian coordinates of the rear axle center, θ is
car heading, s ∈
{
−1,+1
}
is direction of the move-
ment (backward and forward respectively), and φ ∈
[−φ
max
,+φ
max
] is car steering angle. Car positions
are subject to a discrete kinematic model (Kuwata
et al., 2009) C
k+1
= f (C
k
), k ∈ N where function f
is given by Eq. (1):
x
k+1
= x
k
+ s
k
· ∆ ·cos(θ
k
)
y
k+1
= y
k
+ s
k
· ∆ ·sin(θ
k
)
θ
k+1
= θ
k
+
s
k
· ∆
b
·tan(φ
k
),
(1)
where ∆ ∈ R
+
is a positive constant we call the
step distance.
The direction change is a change of the car move-
ment direction s. We denote Γ the number of direction
changes.
Car dimensions is a tuple D = (w,d
f
,d
r
,b,φ
max
),
where w is the width of the car, d
f
and d
r
is the dis-
tance from the rear axle center to the front, respective
back of the car, b is the wheelbase (distance between
the front and rear axle), and φ
max
is the maximum
steering angle.
Car frame F (C) is a rectangle given by car posi-
tion C and car dimensions D.
Minimum turning radius is the radius r of the cir-
cle traced by the rear axle center when the car moves
with the maximum steering. It holds that r =
b
tanφ
max
.
Curb-to-curb distance is the diameter d of the
circle traced by the outer front wheel when the car
moves with the maximum steering. It holds that
d = 2 ·
q
r +
w
2
2
+ b
2
.
Parallel Parking: Optimal Entry and Minimum Slot Dimensions
301