High availability and robustness precise GNSS positioning systems for autonomous vehicle navigation in challenging environments

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Significant progress has been made in the development of Autonomous Vehicles (AV) such as self-driving cars which are expected to greatly impact the industry, society and our lives. Currently all major automakers have developed a self-driving car and tested it on streets. A fully autonomous vehicle, with many highway regulations still to be developed, could be available to market as early as 2020.***AV use various sensors, control hardware and software to manage all aspects of the driving function and require very precise position and orientation information in order to control and navigate the vehicle without input from humans. GNSS is one of such sensors in the automated vehicle sensor suite. Although automakers have adopted GNSS as an indispensable component, current precision GNSS techniques face several obstacles to meet AV's stringent requirements. While self-driving cars currently being tested rely much on weather-dependent sensors which perform poorly in adverse weather and road conditions (e.g. lane markers and road signs are covered or obscured by rain, snow, or fog etc.), their success is limited to only good weather and road conditions. As a weather-independent sensor and also the only sensor that outputs absolute time information critical to other onboard sensors, precision GNSS could play a key role in bad weather and road conditions if it can prove its availability and reliability in challenging environments. ***The major objective of this proposed research is to investigate and develop high availability and robustness precise GNSS positioning methods and algorithms to meet the need of autonomous vehicle navigation in challenging environments. The outcome of this proposed research will consist of new processes, methods and algorithms to enable high availability and robustness precise GNSS positioning and help answer questions such as “can I have precise GNSS positioning whenever I need?”, “can I still have precise GNSS positioning available during loss of GNSS correction data?”, “can I trust the positioning solutions from GNSS?”. A prototype system will also be developed for performance analysis and industrial demonstration. The new processes, methods and algorithms are expected to advance precision GNSS technologies and also enhance the performance of other navigation sensors onboard AV for obstacle detection and environment sensing, particularly in tough weather conditions.**