Fusing GNSS/INS/Vision With <i>A Priori</i> Feature Map for High-Precision and Continuous Navigation

Abstract

Nowadays, the autonomous vehicle has undergone an impressive development, in which one of the most challenging tasks is to pursue high-precision and continuous navigation in complex scenarios. However, GNSS signals are very likely to be blocked and the inertial system suffers from error drift over time. To achieve centimeter-level positioning accuracy, a tightly-coupled model is built via fusing visual, GNSS, and INS measurements, based on a priori visual feature map. The visual map is first generated by a visual mobile surveying system, and the quality of the map is improved by outlier elimination and road lane tracking. This visual feature map consists of two layers that involve 3D coordinates of robust visual features and road lane markings, then two GNSS/INS/Vision fusion models are developed. The first one fuses visual 2D-3D feature matching, GNSS, and INS measurement. The proposed system is effective even when satellites are all out of lock. The second one fuses lane line constraints with GNSS, INS, and distance measurement indicator (DMI). In the experiment part, we show how a visual feature map is generated and refined, then, the performance of the positioning algorithm is evaluated. For the first fusion model, we achieve 10 cm RMS accuracy when only one feature point was matched and all GNSS signals are blocked for 20 minutes. For the other fusion model, the system maintained 10 cm RMS accuracy or even better when a few GNSS satellites are out of lock for 300 seconds.