Smooth path finding for agents with turning circles.

Hey guys,

My team is currently working on a project in which the player and A.I control spaceships of various different sizes. These ships have different turn speeds, the fighters can turn very quickly, almost on the spot, and the larger crafts turn much slower. At the moment this turning capacity is defined as a maximum number of degrees of turning per unit of distance.

The user/A.I needs to be able to to dictate their finishing position and facing. So, given a current position and facing and an ending position and facing I built a path using bezier curves. However bezier curves do not take into account turning circles and can either be too tight for the ship to travel along or too loose for the travel to be efficient use of the ships movement points.

I've currently overcome the tightness by having the ships stop and turn on the spot if a section of the curve is too tight (http://liambrady.co.uk/customised-bezier-algorithm/). This system isn't ideal and I'm beginning to work on another system where I try to create a path by curving from node to node at the ships maximum turn per unit (see picture below), however I've no idea if this will ultimately work and consequently, I'm concerned about pouring lots of time into it.

Is there any kind of established mechanism for this kind of thing? Any pointers/thoughts or a prod in the direction of some formula or algorithm that I might be able to adapt would be really helpful.

Thanks.