Autonomous Parking of Vehicle Fleet in Tight Environments

Abstract

The problem of autonomous parking of vehicle fleets is addressed in this paper. We present a system-level modeling and control framework which allows investigating different vehicle parking strategies while taking into account path planning and collision avoidance. The proposed approach decouples the problem into a centralized parking spot allocation and path generation, and a decentralized collision avoidance control. This paper presents the hierarchical framework and algorithmic details. Extensive simulations are used to assess several allocation strategies in terms of total fleet parking time and queue length. In particular, we describe how Braess's paradox can be observed for parking vehicle fleets.