Vehicle Localization Based on Global Navigation Satellite System Aided by Three-Dimensional Map

Abstract

Accurate vehicle localization technologies are significant for current onboard navigation systems and future autonomous vehicles. More specifically, positioning accuracy is expected at the submeter level. This paper presents an accurate vehicle self-localization system and evaluates the proposed system in different classes of urban environments. The developed system adopts an innovative global navigation satellite system (GNSS) positioning method as the key technique. The GNSS positioning method can improve the positioning error by reducing the effects of multipath interference and non-line-of-sight errors with the aid of a three-dimensional map. To improve positioning accuracy further, the vehicle localization system integrates the GNSS positioning technique with inertial sensors and vision sensors by considering the characteristics of each sensor. The inertial sensors represent vehicle movement with heading direction and vehicle speed. The vision sensor is used to recognize the position change relative to lane markings on the road surface. Those techniques and sensors collaborate to provide an accurate position in the global coordinate system. To verify the effectiveness and stability of the proposed system, a series of tests was conducted in one of the most challenging urban cities, Tokyo. The experiment results demonstrate that the proposed system can achieve submeter accuracy for the positioning error mean and has a 90% correct lane rate in the localization.