ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 7 -- United States Patent no. 12,594,955, issued on April 7, was assigned to GM CRUISE HOLDINGS LLC (San Francisco).
"Autonomous vehicle with freespace planner" was invented by Xiaoyu Zhou (San Francisco), Shreyans Kushwaha (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and Juan Fasola (San Francisco).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Planning, or path finding is one of many tasks performed by an autonomous vehicle (AV). Planning involves searching for and updating an optimal plan from a current pose to an end pose while avoiding obstacles. Planning can be particularly challenging in driving scenarios involving complex driving maneuvers, such as parking, making a U-turn, making a K-turn, etc. Searchi...