  Since early 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread rapidly
across the world. As at the date of writing this article, the disease has been
globally reported in 223 countries and regions, infected over 108 million
people and caused over 2.4 million deaths (https://covid19.who.int/, accessed
on Feb. 17, 2021). Avoiding person-to-person transmission is an effective
approach to control and prevent the pandemic. However, many daily activities,
such as transporting goods in our daily life, inevitably involve
person-to-person contact. Using an autonomous logistic vehicle to achieve
contact-less goods transportation could alleviate this issue. For example, it
can reduce the risk of virus transmission between the driver and customers.
Moreover, many countries have imposed tough lockdown measures to reduce the
virus transmission (e.g., retail, catering) during the pandemic, which causes
inconveniences for human daily life. Autonomous vehicle can deliver the goods
bought by humans, so that humans can get the goods without going out. These
demands motivate us to develop an autonomous vehicle, named as Hercules, for
contact-less goods transportation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The vehicle is
evaluated through real-world delivering tasks under various traffic conditions.
