Path Planning and Control Strategies for a Semi-Autonomous Light Commercial Vehicle Navigating and Avoiding Static Obstacles in Urban Environments

This paper presents the design and implementation of a Semi-Autonomous Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) capable of following a person while performing obstacle avoidance in urban and controlled environments. The LCV leverages its onboard 360-degree view camera, RTK-GNSS, Ultrasonic sensors, and algorithms to independently navigate the environment, avoiding obstacles and maintaining a safe distance from the person it is following. The proposed system employs a path planning algorithm that generates a secondary lateral path originating from the primary driving path to navigate around static obstacles. A Behavior Planner is utilized to decide when to generate the path and avoid obstacles, ensuring timely and efficient navigation adjustments. The primary objective is to ensure seamless and safe navigation in environments where obstacles are present. The LCV's path tracking is achieved using a combination of Pure Pursuit and Proportional-Integral (PI) controllers. The Pure Pursuit controller is responsible for lateral control to follow the generated path, ensuring smooth and accurate path tracking. Additionally, a PI controller is utilized for speed control, maintaining a consistent and safe speed while navigating the environment. This combination enhances the LCV's stability and responsiveness, allowing it to adapt to varying conditions effectively. Extensive experiments were conducted in various urban and controlled environments to evaluate the LCV's performance. The results demonstrate the LCV's ability to effectively avoid obstacles and maintain a consistent following distance, highlighting the robustness, simplicity, and reliability of the proposed system. The solution focuses on slow-speed applications where precision is of utmost priority. Additionally, the application of ultrasonic sensors helped in achieving immediate stops in close proximity scenarios. This system has significant potential for applications in last-mile delivery, logistics, waste management, and urban mobility, offering a versatile solution for safe and efficient navigation in complex environments and narrow roads.