Horizontal/vertical LRFs and GIS maps aided vehicle localization in urban environment

A vehicle localization method is proposed in this paper using two horizontal/vertical laser range finders (LRF) and a geographical information system (GIS). When GPS signals are blocked in some urban areas, e.g. urban canyons, the vehicle motion information can be provided by several dead-reckoning sensors, and corrected by local observations from onboard LRFs and road/building maps. Experiments with real data demonstrate that when GPS signals are blocked or present large jumps, the road map can help to bound the vehicle position around the road; and the building map can help to adjust the vehicle pose from coarse-to-fine such that the local observation can be coherent with the building map. Newly observed landmarks are stored in another map layer to update initial maps over time.