Fusion of heterogeneous sensors for the guidance of an autonomous vehicle

The paper describes the sensor fusion system of an autonomous vehicle for automated vehicle testing. The vehicle sensor system for object detection consists of a stereo vision sensor, four laser-scanners (lidar) and a radar sensor. The sensor system is designed to totally cover the vehicle environment with a high redundancy in front of the vehicle. The sensor fusion system of the vehicle consists of data alignment, data association and state estimation module. An adaptive information filter is used for the fusion of the associated targets from different sensors. The fused targets are input to the path planning and guidance system of the vehicle to generate a collision free motion of the vehicle.