Autonomous vehicles require highly reliable navigation capabilities. For example, a lane-following method cannot be applied in an intersection without lanes, and since typical lane detection is performed using a straight-line model, errors can occur when the lateral distance is estimated in curved sections due to a model mismatch. Therefore, this paper proposes a localization method that uses GPS/DR error estimation based on a lane detection method with curved lane models, stop line detection, and curve matching in order to improve the performance during waypoint following procedures. The advantage of using the proposed method is that position information can be provided for autonomous driving through intersections, in sections with sharp curves, and in curved sections following a straight section. The proposed method was applied in autonomous vehicles at an experimental site to evaluate its performance, and the results indicate that the positioning achieved accuracy at the sub-meter level.

Tall buildings are concentrated in urban areas. The outer walls of buildings are vertically erected to the ground and almost flat. Therefore, the vertical corners that meet the vertical planes are present everywhere in urban areas. These corners act as convenient landmarks, which can be extracted by using the light detection and ranging (LIDAR) sensor. A vertical corner feature based precise vehicle localization method is proposed in this paper and implemented using 3D LIDAR (Velodyne HDL-32E). The vehicle motion is predicted by accumulating the pose increment output from the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm based on the geometric relations between the scan data of the 3D LIDAR. The vertical corner is extracted using the proposed corner extraction method. The vehicle position is then corrected by matching the prebuilt corner map with the extracted corner. The experiment was carried out in the Gangnam area of Seoul, South Korea. In the experimental results, the maximum horizontal position error is about 0.46 m and the 2D Root Mean Square (RMS) horizontal error is about 0.138 m.

An Extended Line Map (ELM)-based precise vehicle localization method is proposed in this paper, and is implemented using 3D Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR). A binary occupancy grid map in which grids for road marking or vertical structures have a value of 1 and the rest have a value of 0 was created using the reflectivity and distance data of the 3D LIDAR. From the map, lines were detected using a Hough transform. After the detected lines were converted into the node and link forms, they were stored as a map. This map is called an extended line map, of which data size is extremely small (134 KB/km). The ELM-based localization is performed through correlation matching. The ELM is converted back into an occupancy grid map and matched to the map generated using the current 3D LIDAR. In this instance, a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) was applied as the correlation matching method, and the matching time was approximately 78 ms (based on MATLAB). The experiment was carried out in the Gangnam area of Seoul, South Korea. The traveling distance was approximately 4.2 km, and the maximum traveling speed was approximately 80 km/h. As a result of localization, the root mean square (RMS) position errors for the lateral and longitudinal directions were 0.136 m and 0.223 m, respectively.

For the safe driving of autonomous vehicles, accurate position estimation is required. Generally, position error must be less than 1m because of lane keeping. However, GPS positioning error is more than 1m. Therefore, we must correct this error and a map matching algorithm is generally used. Especially, road marking intensity map have been used in many studies. In previous work, 3D LIDAR with many vertical layers was used to generate a local intensity map. Because it can be obtained sufficient longitudinal information for map matching. However, it is expensive and sufficient road marking information cannot be obtained in rush hour situations. In this paper, we propose a localization algorithm using an accumulated intensity local map. An accumulated intensity local map can be generated with sufficient longitudinal information using 3D LIDAR with a few vertical layers. Using this algorithm, we can also obtain sufficient intensity information in rush hour situations. Thus, it is possible to increase the reliability of the map matching and get accurate position estimation result. In the experimental result, the lateral RMS position error is about 0.12m and the longitudinal RMS error is about 0.19m.

Vehicle localization is essential for autonomous driving. Basically, the position information of the autonomous vehicle is obtained from the Global Positioning System (GPS). More accurate localization can be performed by using maps and various sensors that are mounted on the autonomous vehicle. GPS receivers cannot receive GPS signals in tunnels, so dead reckoning (DR) is used for vehicle localization. However, the error from DR continuously accumulates. Therefore, this error must be corrected by using vehicle-mounted sensors, such as Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) and cameras. Tunnels have very specific shape information, which is usually an ellipse, and several emergency facilities exist in tunnels. Some facilities are separated from the tunnel wall, which can be detected by using 3D LIDAR. In particular, fire extinguisher lamps are periodically installed at intervals of 50 m, which can serve as good landmarks. First, the point cloud for the tunnel wall must be removed to effectively detect fire extinguisher lamps. This process can be easily conducted by using shape information. After this removal, we detect the fire extinguisher lamps. In this paper, we propose a 3D LIDAR-based vehicle-localization method that uses ellipse parameters and fire extinguisher lamps in road tunnels. These experiments are conducted at the Maseong tunnel in South Korea. The experimental results show that the root mean square (RMS) position errors in the lateral and longitudinal directions were 0.06 m and 0.23 m, respectively, exhibiting precise localization accuracy.