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Estimating the pose (position and attitude) in real-time is a key function for road autonomous vehicles. This thesis aims at studying vehicle localization performance using low cost automotive sensors. Three kinds of sensors are considered : dead reckoning (DR) sensors that already exist in modern vehicles, mono-frequency GNSS (Global navigation satellite system) receivers with patch antennas and a frontlooking lane detection camera. Highly accurate maps enhanced with road features are also key components for autonomous vehicle navigation. In this work, a lane marking map with decimeter-level accuracy is considered. The localization problem is studied in a local East-North-Up (ENU) working frame. Indeed, the localization outputs are used in real-time as inputs to a path planner and a motion generator to make a valet vehicle able to drive autonomously at low speed with nobody on-board the car. The use of a lane detection camera makes possible to exploit lane marking information stored in the georeferenced map. A lane marking detection module detects the vehicle's host lane and provides the lateral distance between the detected lane marking and the vehicle. The camera is also able to identify the type of the detected lane markings (e.g., solid or dashed). Since the camera gives relative measurements, the important step is to link the measures with the vehicle's state. A refined camera observation model is proposed. It expresses the camera metric measurements as a function of the vehicle's state vector and the parameters of the detected lane markings. However, the use of a camera alone has some limitations. For example, lane markings can be missing in some parts of the navigation area and the camera sometimes fails to detect the lane markings in particular at cross-roads. GNSS, which is mandatory for cold start initialization, can be used also continuously in the multi-sensor localization system as done often when GNSS compensates for the DR drift. GNSS positioning errors can't be modeled as white noises in particular with low cost mono-frequency receivers working in a standalone way, due to the unknown delays when the satellites signals cross the atmosphere and real-time satellites orbits errors. GNSS can also be affected by strong biases which are mainly due to multipath effect. This thesis studies GNSS biases shaping models that are used in the localization solver by augmenting the state vector. An abrupt bias due to multipath is seen as an outlier that has to be rejected by the filter. Depending on the information flows between the GNSS receiver and the other components of the localization system, data-fusion architectures are commonly referred to as loosely coupled (GNSS fixes and velocities) and tightly coupled (raw pseudoranges and Dopplers for the satellites in view). This thesis investigates both approaches. In particular, a road-invariant approach is proposed to handle a refined modeling of the GNSS error in the loosely coupled approach since the camera can only improve the localization performance in the lateral direction of the road. Finally, this research discusses some map-matching issues for instance when the uncertainty domain of the vehicle state becomes large if the camera is blind. It is challenging in this case to distinguish between different lanes when the camera retrieves lane marking measurements.As many outdoor experiments have been carried out with equipped vehicles, every problem addressed in this thesis is evaluated with real data. The different studied approaches that perform the data fusion of DR, GNSS, camera and lane marking map are compared and several conclusions are drawn on the fusion architecture choice.
This dissertation presents several related algorithms that enable important capabilities for self-driving vehicles. Using a rotating multi-beam laser rangefinder to sense the world, our vehicle scans millions of 3D points every second. Calibrating these sensors plays a crucial role in accurate perception, but manual calibration is unreasonably tedious, and generally inaccurate. As an alternative, we present an unsupervised algorithm for automatically calibrating both the intrinsics and extrinsics of the laser unit from only seconds of driving in an arbitrary and unknown environment. We show that the results are not only vastly easier to obtain than traditional calibration techniques, they are also more accurate. A second key challenge in autonomous navigation is reliable localization in the face of uncertainty. Using our calibrated sensors, we obtain high resolution infrared reflectivity readings of the world. From these, we build large-scale self-consistent probabilistic laser maps of urban scenes, and show that we can reliably localize a vehicle against these maps to within centimeters, even in dynamic environments, by fusing noisy GPS and IMU readings with the laser in realtime. We also present a localization algorithm that was used in the DARPA Urban Challenge, which operated without a prerecorded laser map, and allowed our vehicle to complete the entire six-hour course without a single localization failure. Finally, we present a collection of algorithms for the mapping and detection of traffic lights in realtime. These methods use a combination of computer-vision techniques and probabilistic approaches to incorporating uncertainty in order to allow our vehicle to reliably ascertain the state of traffic-light-controlled intersections.
This book is the first technical overview of autonomous vehicles written for a general computing and engineering audience. The authors share their practical experiences of creating autonomous vehicle systems. These systems are complex, consisting of three major subsystems: (1) algorithms for localization, perception, and planning and control; (2) client systems, such as the robotics operating system and hardware platform; and (3) the cloud platform, which includes data storage, simulation, high-definition (HD) mapping, and deep learning model training. The algorithm subsystem extracts meaningful information from sensor raw data to understand its environment and make decisions about its actions. The client subsystem integrates these algorithms to meet real-time and reliability requirements. The cloud platform provides offline computing and storage capabilities for autonomous vehicles. Using the cloud platform, we are able to test new algorithms and update the HD map—plus, train better recognition, tracking, and decision models. This book consists of nine chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of autonomous vehicle systems; Chapter 2 focuses on localization technologies; Chapter 3 discusses traditional techniques used for perception; Chapter 4 discusses deep learning based techniques for perception; Chapter 5 introduces the planning and control sub-system, especially prediction and routing technologies; Chapter 6 focuses on motion planning and feedback control of the planning and control subsystem; Chapter 7 introduces reinforcement learning-based planning and control; Chapter 8 delves into the details of client systems design; and Chapter 9 provides the details of cloud platforms for autonomous driving. This book should be useful to students, researchers, and practitioners alike. Whether you are an undergraduate or a graduate student interested in autonomous driving, you will find herein a comprehensive overview of the whole autonomous vehicle technology stack. If you are an autonomous driving practitioner, the many practical techniques introduced in this book will be of interest to you. Researchers will also find plenty of references for an effective, deeper exploration of the various technologies.
Making autonomous driving possible requires extensive information about the surroundings as well as the state of the vehicle. While specific information can be obtained through singular sensors, a full estimation requires a multi sensory approach, including redundant sources of information to increase robustness. This thesis gives an overview of tasks that arise in sensor fusion in autonomous driving, and presents solutions at a high level of detail, including derivations and parameters where required to enable re-implementation. The thesis includes theoretical considerations of the approaches as well as practical evaluations. Evaluations are also included for approaches that did not prove to solve their tasks robustly. This follows the belief that both results further the state of the art by giving researchers ideas about suitable and unsuitable approaches, where otherwise the unsuitable approaches may be re-implemented multiple times with similar results. The thesis focuses on model-based methods, also referred to in the following as classical methods, with a special focus on probabilistic and evidential theories. Methods based on deep learning are explicitly not covered to maintain explainability and robustness which would otherwise strongly rely on the available training data. The main focus of the work lies in three main fields of autonomous driving: localization, which estimates the state of the ego-vehicle, mapping or obstacle detection, where drivable areas are identified, and object detection and tracking, which estimates the state of all surrounding traffic participants. All algorithms are designed with the requirements of autonomous driving in mind, with a focus on robustness, real-time capability and usability of the approaches in all potential scenarios that may arise in urban driving. In localization the state of the vehicle is determined. While traditionally global positioning systems such as a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) are often used for this task, they are prone to errors and may produce jumps in the position estimate which may cause unexpected and dangerous behavior. The focus of research in this thesis is the development of a localization system which produces a smooth state estimate without any jumps. For this two localization approaches are developed and executed in parallel. One localization is performed without global information to avoid jumps. This however only provides odometry, which drifts over time and does not give global positioning. To provide this information the second localization includes GNSS information, thus providing a global estimate which is free of global drift. Additionally the use of LiDAR odometry for improving the localization accuracy is evaluated. For mapping the focus of this thesis is on providing a computationally efficient mapping system which is capable of being used in arbitrarily large areas with no predefined size. This is achieved by mapping only the direct environment of the vehicle, with older information in the map being discarded. This is motivated by the observation that the environment in autonomous driving is highly dynamic and must be mapped anew every time the vehicles sensors observe an area. The provided map gives subsequent algorithms information about areas where the vehicle can or cannot drive. For this an occupancy grid map is used, which discretizes the map into cells of a fixed size, with each cell estimating whether its corresponding space in the world is occupied. However the grid map is not created for the entire area which could potentially be visited, as this may be very large and potentially impossible to represent in the working memory. Instead the map is created only for a window around the vehicle, with the vehicle roughly in the center. A hierarchical map organization is used to allow efficient moving of the window as the vehicle moves through an area. For the hierarchical map different data structures are evaluated for their time and space complexity in order to find the most suitable implementation for the presented mapping approach. Finally for tracking a late-fusion approach to the multi-sensor fusion task of estimating states of all other traffic participants is presented. Object detections are obtained from LiDAR, camera and Radar sensors, with an additional source of information being obtained from vehicle-to-everything communication which is also fused in the late fusion. The late fusion is developed for easy extendability and with arbitrary object detection algorithms in mind. For the first evaluation it relies on black box object detections provided by the sensors. In the second part of the research in object tracking multiple algorithms for object detection on LiDAR data are evaluated for the use in the object tracking framework to ease the reliance on black box implementations. A focus is set on detecting objects from motion, where three different approaches are evaluated for motion estimation in LiDAR data: LiDAR optical flow, evidential dynamic mapping and normal distribution transforms. The thesis contains both theoretical contributions and practical implementation considerations for the presented approaches with a high degree of detail including all necessary derivations. All results are implemented and evaluated on an autonomous vehicle and real-world data. With the developed algorithms autonomous driving is realized for urban areas.
This important text/reference presents state-of-the-art research on intelligent vehicles, covering not only topics of object/obstacle detection and recognition, but also aspects of vehicle motion control. With an emphasis on both high-level concepts, and practical detail, the text links theory, algorithms, and issues of hardware and software implementation in intelligent vehicle research. Topics and features: presents a thorough introduction to the development and latest progress in intelligent vehicle research, and proposes a basic framework; provides detection and tracking algorithms for structured and unstructured roads, as well as on-road vehicle detection and tracking algorithms using boosted Gabor features; discusses an approach for multiple sensor-based multiple-object tracking, in addition to an integrated DGPS/IMU positioning approach; examines a vehicle navigation approach using global views; introduces algorithms for lateral and longitudinal vehicle motion control.
Autonomous Vehicles (AV) applications and Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS) relay in scene understanding processes allowing high level systems to carry out decision marking. For such systems, the localization of a vehicle evolving in a structured dynamic environment constitutes a complex problem of crucial importance. Our research addresses scene structure detection, localization and error modeling. Taking into account the large functional spectrum of vision systems, the accessibility of Open Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and the widely presence of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) onboard vehicles, we study the performance and the reliability of a vehicle localization method combining such information sources. Monocular vision-based lane marking detection provides key information about the scene structure. Using an enhanced multi-kernel framework with hierarchical weights, the proposed parametric method performs, in real time, the detection and tracking of the ego-lane marking. A self-assessment indicator quantifies the confidence of this information source. We conduct our investigations in a localization system which tightly couples GPS, GIS and lane makings in the probabilistic framework of Particle Filter (PF). To this end, it is proposed the use of lane markings not only during the map-matching process but also to model the expected ego-vehicle motion. The reliability of the localization system, in presence of unusual errors from the different information sources, is enhanced by taking into account different confidence indicators. Such a mechanism is later employed to identify error sources. This research concludes with an experimental validation in real driving situations of the proposed methods. They were tested and its performance was quantified using an experimental vehicle and publicly available datasets.
During the past decade model predictive control (MPC), also referred to as receding horizon control or moving horizon control, has become the preferred control strategy for quite a number of industrial processes. There have been many significant advances in this area over the past years, one of the most important ones being its extension to nonlinear systems. This book gives an up-to-date assessment of the current state of the art in the new field of nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC). The main topic areas that appear to be of central importance for NMPC are covered, namely receding horizon control theory, modeling for NMPC, computational aspects of on-line optimization and application issues. The book consists of selected papers presented at the International Symposium on Nonlinear Model Predictive Control – Assessment and Future Directions, which took place from June 3 to 5, 1998, in Ascona, Switzerland. The book is geared towards researchers and practitioners in the area of control engineering and control theory. It is also suited for postgraduate students as the book contains several overview articles that give a tutorial introduction into the various aspects of nonlinear model predictive control, including systems theory, computations, modeling and applications.
This book provides cutting-edge insights into autonomous vehicles and road terrain classification, and introduces a more rational and practical method for identifying road terrain. It presents the MRF algorithm, which combines the various sensors’ classification results to improve the forward LRF for predicting upcoming road terrain types. The comparison between the predicting LRF and its corresponding MRF show that the MRF multiple-sensor fusion method is extremely robust and effective in terms of classifying road terrain. The book also demonstrates numerous applications of road terrain classification for various environments and types of autonomous vehicle, and includes abundant illustrations and models to make the comparison tables and figures more accessible.