GPS/MAP based road parameters acquirement for automotive control system

Behavior of road vehicles is highly affected by the road situations. The control units of the vehicles should know as more as possible information on the road to carry out proper operations. But it is hard to get road information with traditional detection approaches. Positioning plus electronic map provides an access to get road information which is position dependent. Based on the original .shp format (shapefile) electronic map, the information of road layer, point layer and the subsidiary information are processed according to our system´s requirements. The data structures of the road elements with their attributes are then stored into a data file. The map file contains road geographic information and the attributes of every road segments. The course is carried out off-line. The vehicle position can be obtained with GPS corrected with other position algorithm. The vehicle´s road section is determined by matching the current vehicle coordinate and motion direction with the subsidiary parameters of the road sections stored in the road map file. When a road section is matched, its basic information can be looked up from its data structure, and other information can be calculated with them. The tests show that the road information could be acquired with the method. The road information could be shared and used in every in-vehicle control systems.