paper: Driving a Robot — Fastest Path from A to B

[James Kuszmaul]

Even assuming that, when accelerating as hard as possible, that acceleration is insignificant*, it should be noted that a human driver still has to control the robot for the in-place turn. And I doubt there are any drivers out there that can time it such that they switch from full acceleration to full deceleration at just the right time to turn a precise angle. The hardest part isn't accelerating as fast as possible; it's being as accurate as possible while moving at speed.
This still leaves the question of what the fastest path would be in autonomous, accounting for acceleration. Turn-Straight-Turn is certainly the simplest and reasonably fast if you get your control loops right.

*Keep in mind that if each acceleration takes a fraction of a second, you still have to accelerate/decelerate three times in a given maneuver, which can add up to a couple seconds over the course of a maneuver and even a second per maneuver adds up quickly when doing multiple maneuvers per cycle and multiple cycles per match.