A real time localization system for vehicles using terrain-based time series subsequence matching

Abstract

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs) are commonly used for positioning vehicles in open areas. Yet a GNSS frequently encounters loss of lock in urban areas. This paper presents a new real-time localization system using measurements from vehicle odometer data and data from an onboard inertial measurement unit (IMU), in the case of lacking GNSS information. A Dead Reckoning model integrates odometer data, IMU angular and velocity data to estimate the rough position of the vehicle. We then use an R-Tree structured reference road map of pitch data to boost spatial search efficiency. An optimized time series subsequence matching method matches the measured pitch data and the stored pitch data in reference road map for more accurate position estimation. The two estimated positions are fused using an extended Kalman filter model for final localization. The proposed localization system was tested for computational complexity with a median runtime of 12 ms, and for positioning accuracy with a median position error of 0.3 m.