In this paper, we report on the developed solution for the autonomous leader-follower system, where an uncrewed ground vehicle follows a human-driven vehicle in outdoor field deployments. The solution consists of the leader vehicle detection and tracking, planning the follower’s path, and autonomous navigation of the follower along the leader’s path, considering its traversability capabilities using a locally built map. The follower runs its localization system to align 3D scans of its surrounding environment into the map used for path planning. The leader detection is based on the combined LiDAR and RGB perception, where LiDAR data provide near-field object detection, including estimates of its distance and orientation. On the other hand, the RGB image is used to estimate the direction of the detected object. Relatively bumpy terrain causes frequent loss of line of sight between the leader and follower vehicles. Therefore, the tracking is supported by the motion model of the leader vehicle, and its detected positions are tracked using an extended Kalman filter. The tracking is further supported by the pose estimate of the follower and projecting the leader’s positions into a local map frame. The localization is a GNSS-free stand-alone solution based on modified LIO-SAM using LiDAR sensors, which has been shown to be sufficient. The developed solution has been deployed in an outdoor field testing site where it successfully performs leader following for about 1 km long trail with median velocity about 1 ms \(^{-1}\) .