A vision-based robotic follower vehicle

This paper presents the development of a vision-based robotic follower system with the eventual goal of autonomous convoying. The follower vehicle, trained at run-time, tracks an arbitrary lead vehicle and estimates the leader's position from the sequence of video images. Pan, tilt and zoom keep the leader in the follower's field of view as it drives the leader's path. The system was demonstrated following vehicles in an on-road scenario, as well as dismounted human leaders off-road.