Autonomous ground vehicle navigation method in complex environment

In this paper, a 3D laser point cloud-based navigation method for autonomous ground vehicles in complex environment is proposed. With a coordinate transformation of laser data from sphere to cylinder, environment perception cylinder is configured. In the cylinder, terrain traversability is predicted through analysis on radial and tangential slope of 3D point cloud. In addition, the candidate point cloud of traversable region has been extracted. Furthermore, navigation circle contained with direction information is built up based on the candidate point cloud. Extended experimental results demonstrate that the method allows autonomous ground vehicle to move safely and correctly in complex environment.