Vision Based Vehicle Localization for Autonomous Navigation

The vast majority of Autonomous Ground Vehicles in development today operate with GPS based navigation systems. While the accuracy of GPS systems has improved greatly over the previous decade, the stability of their signal has not. The phenomenon is commonly known as "drift" and may have a magnitude of more than a few meters. This paper outlines a method for vision based correction and localization of vehicle position through consideration of a priori information and perceived road characteristics. The approach is called Vision Based Position Correction for Urban Environments, and it will be deployed in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge.