Target-tracking and path planning for vehicle following in jungle environment

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed a robot vehicle following algorithm which can navigate a 10 ton armored personnel carrier to follow a leading vehicle (MPV) in the jungle. This algorithm comprises two components, the first one is a target tracking module which can detect and track the lead vehicle from the measurements of a SICK laser scanner; the second one is a obstacle avoidance module which takes the tracking results and the local environment description as input, it then generates the set-points for the vehicle to follow. Plenty of trials have been carried out in the jungle of Singapore, our technique's validity and robust is demonstrated and tested, the results will be showed in this paper.