Research on driving path planning: A review and bibliometric analysis

Driving path planning is of great significance to improve driving safety and traffic efficiency. To comprehensively understand the research progress in the field of driving path planning, based on the core database of Web of Science, 1413 literatures published from 2000 to 2023 (as of October 19, 2023), covering 4674 authors and 1389 keywords, were obtained. Using bibliometric tools VOSviewer and R-Bibliometric, the research progress is systematically analyzed. Firstly, the literature is analyzed from five dimensions: annual distribution, national distribution, research institutions, source journals and core authors. Secondly, research hotspots and trends are analyzed from four perspectives: literature co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, high-impact literature, and development trend. On this basis, the statistical analysis structure chart and corresponding analysis and summary frameworks of research are established to summarize the research status. Results show that research in this field has experienced a period of rapid growth and tends to develop steadily. In the early stage, Italy, Singapore, and the United States accumulated more research results, and then China, Sweden and Greece’s research developed rapidly. Institutions such as the University of California, Berkeley, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich were involved in early research, followed by KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Tongji University. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, IEEE Transactions on Vehicle Technology are the most authoritative journals in this field, and Wang Meiling, Cao Dongpu, and Fu Mengyin are the most core authors. In recent years, the focus of research on driving path planning has mainly focused on autonomous driving, among which, the research on trajectory generation considering environment recognition, method of motion and trajectory planning emphasizing efficiency and stability, planning technology of collision avoidance trajectory emphasizing safety, and the quality of the solution of planning model are the important directions.