Pedestrians walking on reachable sets and manifolds

Abstract—It is a challenge to find safe trajectories for auto-
mated vehicles. Especially in urban environments with pedestri-
ans there exist many different situations. The prediction of future
movements with absolute certainty is impossible if the intention of
the pedestrian is unknown. This paper is intended to offer a new
concept of decision-making for motion planning with vulnerable
road-users in urban environments. Reachability analysis is used
to define spatial areas based on physical constraints, where the
pedestrian might go. The approach is physically inspired and it
can be proven for all kind of pedestrians. A new approach to
cluster spatial areas is introduced to store specific environmental
information about the pedestrian. The maximum values for jerk,
acceleration and velocity of the pedestrian are necessary to find
reachable areas.