Path planning for EVs based on RA-RRT* model

Abstract

The optimal path planning for EVs (electric vehicles) has gained great attention during the last decade due to the zero pollution emission characteristics and limited power capacity of EV batteries. In this paper, an optimal route search is proposed considering multiple charging stations in a dynamic urban environment, while it is still applicable when the initial available amount of the battery fails to cover a certain travel range. The TRDP (transit route design problem) and TNDP (transit node design problem) are used to search for the most feasible routes based on time and driving range via the improved route-assisted rapid random tree (RA-RRT*) algorithm. Considering the status of charge of an EV’s battery during optimal routes search, three states are investigated between the destination and the aggregators: (1) bypassing the aggregators, (2) stopping over a single aggregator, and (3) stopping over multiple aggregators. During the states (2) and (3), it is required that the EVs be charged at the charging stations obtained by the RA-RRT* algorithm while approaching the destination. The proposed algorithm is tested on a random dataset under certain conditions, that is, traffic flow with congestion and assigned target locations from a given map data, with comparison experiments for efficacy verification.