Pedestrian Avoidance for Unmanned Ground Vehicles Based on Velocity Occupancy Space

ABSTRACT Velocity Occupancy Space (VOS) is an algorithm used to perform real-time moving obstacle avoidance for Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs). Pedestrian safety and comfort must be ensured by the guidance algorithm when UGVs operate near pedestrians. Studies on human interactions are used to formulate desired behavior of the UGV as it avoids people. Then, VOS is enhanced with improved avoidance behavior. We investigate three potential methods for enhancing pedestrian safety and comfort. To study the effect of these enhancements, numerical simulations of a large set of randomly generated scenarios. The number of collisions, and minimum required opening width, were used to characterize the performance of each avoidance enhancement technique. Two of the methods eliminate collisions with pedestrians; the preferred technique, which artificially enlarges the size of detected pedestrians, accomplishes this consistently.