Path and Control Planning for Autonomous Vehicles in Restricted Space and Low Speed
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Overall the paper is acceptable based on the work presented.
In my view, the authors have succeeded to develop and test algorithms for parking and docking based on kinematic vehicle models and nonlinear optimization within limited and unlimited spaces.
The authors did a good job of explaining their work.
The diagrams and figures in the paper are neat and legible.
However, I get the impression that the paper was written in a word processor such as Microsoft Word or something similar and that LaTeX was not used. You will notice that all references in the text of paragraphs, instead of using a subscript, the authors used a smaller font to serve as a subscript. In the diagrams, subscripts were used correctly. This made it a bit difficult to read the paper. As an example in line number 149, to denote the x-coordinate of the velocity, italicized vx was used, but the font size of x was smaller than that of v, this was done to create the impression of a subscript. It is definitely not a subscript since both letters appear to be on the same vertical height in the text. Another glaring example is in line number 369, the reference to "x0C0y0" and "xkCkyk" instead of x0C0y0. This trend is visible through the entire paper and there are too many cases to highlight; simply every subscripted variable in the numerous paragraphs of text has this "pseudo-subscript appearance" in it. This problem should be taken care of once this paper is converted to LaTeX.
My suggestion is, that should this paper be accepted that the authors be requested to convert the paper to LaTeX and resubmit it. This will improve the appearance and quality of the text of the paper by leaps and bound.
I could not find anything wrong with the mathematical explanation in the paper. The authors did a good job as far as this is concerned. There were a few typographical errors in the paper. In the inequality in line number 345, the right-hand side has been omitted.
I have also noticed that throughout the paper the authors instead of writing out "denotes" the equal sign was used. The first occurrence was observed in line number 147, "x = vehicle longitudinal displacement", instead of "x denotes the longitudinal displacement", etc. To provide a few more examples, please look at line numbers 298 to 304, also in and 389 and 409, etc. There are many, many more in the paper.
A few of the minor typographical or other errors are indicated below:
Replace all references of "et al." with its italics equivalent; "et al."
Line no. 21 - Replace "vehicle11permissible" with "vehicle permissible"
Line no. 43 - Replace "loose place" with "available place" or "free space"
Line no. 83 - The sentence "Authors state that the algorithm performance proved by a series of experimental tests". Possibly "improved"?
Line no. 116 - Replace "Simulation" with "simulation".
Line no. 129 - Replace "fixated" with "fixed"
Line no. 178 - Replace "Eq.(3.4) into Eq.(3.13)" with "Eq.(3) into Eq.(13)".
Lines 201 and 216 contain further examples of pseudo-subscripts. There are too many to mention. But the authors are requested to find all occurrences in the paper and to replace it with proper subscripts. Almost every page contains a few of the pseudo-subscripts.
Line no. 322 - Replace "nearby" with "close".
Line no. 361 - Italisize "n"; i.e. "n"
Line no. 376 - The lowercase greek symbol phi is referred to while the uppercase version of phi is referred to in line no. 378.
Line no. 383 - Insert the word "are" to get; "... coordinate system x0C0y0 are:"
Line no. 450 - Either change "arbitrary" to "arbitrarily"
OR insert an appropriate word between "arbitrary" and "using".
Line no. 477 - Replace "loose parking place" with "free parking space".
Line no. 517 - Remove the last in the vector in front of the bracket; (1,1,1,1,0,1)
Line no. 517 - Remove the last comma in the vector before the closing bracket; (1,1,1,1,0,1)
Line no. 522 - Remove the word "the" to get "...the vehicle may occupy as much.."
Line no. 524 - Replace with "it's undesirable for its links to be folded on a big angle."
Line no. 529 - Remove the last comma in the vector before the closing bracket; (1,1,1,0,0,0,0,)
Line no. 539 - Sentence does not make sense. Remove "the" in front of "certain".
Line no. 593 - Replace "Figure 6a-b" with "Figure 4c-d".
Line no. 602 - Split paragraph. Move "The results for truck..." to a new paragraph. It deals with a different case.
Line no. 699 - Change year of publication to boldface "Canada, 2006, 4704-4711."
Author Response
Thank you so much your thorough and most helpful comments. Please see the attached file which includes the response to each comment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The research develops and tests algorithms for parking and docking based on kinematic vehicle models and nonlinear optimization with space constraints.
The introduction section with the literature review as well as the research objectives are well stated.
The applied methodology is sound and adequately analyzed.
However, there is no statement regarding the accuracy of the method, as well as the margins within which a parking task can be performed successfully as a function of the vehicle’s overall length and the available space.
Although the kinematic equations adequately cover the vehicle trajectories, are there any parameters disregarded?
Why is the vehicle initially positioned 5m offset in the parallel parking (y distance in Figure 3a)?
Can this distance be reduced? Under which conditions?
Author Response
Thank you so much your thorough and most helpful comments. Please see the attached file which includes the response to each comment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
