US 12,252,158 B2
Time gaps for autonomous vehicles
Jennifer Iglesias, San Francisco, CA (US); Lucas Watson, Cambridge, MA (US); and Tian Yu Liu, Mountain View, CA (US)
Assigned to Waymo LLC, Mountain View, CA (US)
Filed by Waymo LLC, Mountain View, CA (US)
Filed on Aug. 12, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/400,286.
Prior Publication US 2023/0047336 A1, Feb. 16, 2023
Int. Cl. B60W 60/00 (2020.01); B60W 30/095 (2012.01); B60W 40/04 (2006.01); B60W 50/00 (2006.01)
CPC B60W 60/00274 (2020.02) [B60W 30/0956 (2013.01); B60W 40/04 (2013.01); B60W 50/0097 (2013.01); B60W 60/00272 (2020.02); B60W 2554/801 (2020.02); B60W 2554/806 (2020.02)] 21 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of controlling an autonomous vehicle in an autonomous driving mode, the method comprising:
receiving, by one or more processors, a predicted future trajectory for an object detected in a driving environment of the autonomous vehicle;
receiving, by the one or more processors, a routing intent for the autonomous vehicle identifying a route that the autonomous vehicle should follow to reach a current destination of the autonomous vehicle;
determining that the predicted future trajectory and the routing intent intersect with one another;
when the predicted future trajectory and the routing intent are determined to intersect with one another, applying, by the one or more processors, a time gap by adding a temporal buffer to a predicted future state of the object defined in the predicted future trajectory;
after applying the time gap, generating, by the one or more processors, a new trajectory for the autonomous vehicle by adjusting a geometry component of the new trajectory using the time gap in order to avoid where the object was or is predicted to be within the temporal buffer; and
controlling, by the one or more processors, the autonomous vehicle in the autonomous driving mode based on the new trajectory.