Road Class Validation Using Guaranteed Position Range
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional satellite navigation and RAIM technology are not sufficiently precise and reliable for ensuring safe transitions from driver-controlled to autonomous driving modes, resulting in large guaranteed position ranges that make it impossible to accurately determine the vehicle's road class, especially under high integrity requirements.
Innovation Solution
A method that uses satellite navigation, refined by odometry and inertial sensors, to determine vehicle position and establish a guaranteed position range, which is then matched with an electronically stored road map to validate the road class by considering open spaces without drivable infrastructure, allowing for reliable road classification even with large position uncertainty.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional satellite navigation and RAIM technology are used to determine vehicle position, then the positioning system is simple to implement, but the guaranteed position range becomes too large to reliably detect road class
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extends the validation from two-dimensional road geometry to three-dimensional space by incorporating vertical information (bridges, underpasses) and lateral information (open spaces without drivable infrastructure). This dimensional expansion allows the system to reliably distinguish road classes even when the horizontal guaranteed position range is large, as the vehicle cannot be on multiple vertically or laterally separated roads simultaneously.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces map data containing information about open spaces without drivable infrastructure as an intermediary element. This intermediary data layer acts as a filter that eliminates impossible road classes from consideration, allowing reliable road class detection without requiring a reduced guaranteed position range.
2Measurement precision
If the guaranteed position range is reduced to improve positioning precision, then road class detection becomes more reliable, but the system complexity increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses a copy of spatial information from map data (open spaces without drivable infrastructure) to validate the road class determination. Instead of improving the physical measurement system, the invention copies contextual information from maps and uses it to filter possible road classes, achieving precision without increasing measurement system complexity.
3Reliability
If high integrity requirements are applied to ensure safe autonomous driving mode transitions, then safety is improved, but the guaranteed position range increases making road class detection impossible
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the guaranteed position range validation into multiple independent checks: horizontal road alignment, vertical elevation consistency, and lateral open space analysis. By dividing the validation process into segments, the system can satisfy high integrity requirements with a large guaranteed position range, as each segment independently eliminates impossible road classes.
Data Source
AI summary
The disclosure relates to a method and a corresponding execution device. The method includes determining a position of a vehicle by a satellite navigation system, establishing a guaranteed position range, where the guaranteed position range describes the geographical region around the actual position of the vehicle, in which the determined position has to be located according to a specified minimum integrity, matching the determined position with an electronically stored road map and corresponding allocation of the position of the vehicle to a road on the road map, where the road map includes information regarding open spaces without a drivable infrastructure as well as an allocation of roads according to road classes, and validating the road class of the allocated road according to the road map on the basis of the guaranteed position range as well as the information contained in the road map regarding open spaces without a drivable infrastructure.