Development and evaluation of modified virtual semi circle path planning of mobile guard unmanned ground vehicle truck for surveillance

This study aims to develop and evaluate path planning algorithm for an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV). UGV in this thesis is known as Mobile Guard UGV-Truck for Surveillance (MG-TruckS). MG-TruckS is used to enhance the efficiency of the security in monitoring the residential areas. MG-truckS is able to help human in facing a high risk situations such as burglary, murder, theft and robbery. Modified Virtual Semi Circle (MVSC) algorithm is an algorithm that has been proposed to navigate the MG-TruckS. MVSC approach is implemented in this study. MVSC is divided into two phases which are obstacle detection and obstacle avoidance to compute an optimal path. MG-TruckS is equipped with five ultrasonic range finder sensors with an ideal arrangement in order for locating a minimum number of sensors. There is a blind zone in order to perform a wide forward looking motion. There are three influence zone with three conditions that are formed in each obstacle detection. The study succeeded in producing lemmas and theorem that support the algorithm proposed and has been verified through simulation by MATLAB. In conclusion, this study is managed to build, evaluate and modified Virtual Semi Circle (VSC) with new approach based on VSC to navigate the MG-TruckS. The implication is the simplest path planning proposed helps to reduce the workload by an UGV to compute it path planning.