Method for determining passable area in planning a path of autonomous driving vehicles

A non-transitory machine-readable medium having instructions stored therein, which when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform operations of operating an autonomous driving vehicle (ADV), the operations comprising:

• in response to determining that an obstacle is blocking at least a portion of a current lane in which an ADV is driving, determining an obstacle boundary of the obstacle;
• determining a lane configuration of a road within which the current lane is located based on map data of a map corresponding to the road, wherein the lane configuration comprises a number of lanes within the road and a lane type of each of the number of lanes;
• determining a passing lane boundary of a passing lane that can be utilized by the ADV based on the lane configuration of the road and the obstacle boundary of the obstacle;
• calculating a passable area boundary within the passing lane boundary based on a size of the ADV, wherein the passable area boundary is utilized by the ADV to pass the obstacle without collision;
• and
• planning a trajectory within the passable area boundary to control the ADV to pass the obstacle.

A data processing system, comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory coupled to the processor to store instructions, which when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations, the operations including:
• in response to determining that an obstacle is blocking at least a portion of a current lane in which an autonomous driving vehicle (ADV) is driving, determining an obstacle boundary of the obstacle,
• determining a lane configuration of a road within which the current lane is located based on map data of a map corresponding to the road, wherein the lane configuration comprises a number of lanes within the road and a lane type of each of the number of lanes,
• determining a passing lane boundary of a passing lane that can be utilized by the ADV based on the lane configuration of the road and the obstacle boundary of the obstacle,
• calculating a passable area boundary within the passing lane boundary based on a size of the ADV, wherein the passable area boundary is utilized by the ADV to pass the obstacle without collision, and
• planning a trajectory within the passable area boundary to control the ADV to pass the obstacle.