Clothoid-Based Lane-Level High-Definition Maps: Unifying Sensing and Control Models

Abstract

Autonomous vehicles rely on lane-level high-definition (HD) maps for self-localization and trajectory planning. Current mapping, however, relies on simple line models, while clothoid curves have unexplored potential. Clothoids, well known in road design, are often chosen to model the vehicle trajectory in planning and control systems as they describe the road with higher fidelity. For this reason, we propose two vision-based pipelines for generating lane-level HD maps using clothoid models. The first pipeline performs mapping with known poses, requiring precise real-time kinematics GPS (RTK GPS) measurements; the second copes with noisy localizations, solving the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem. Both pipelines rely on a line detection algorithm to identify each line marking and perform a graph-based optimization to estimate the map.