Multi-Sensors Data Fusion for Navigation of Self-Driving Vehicles

在过去的十年里，由于汽车制造商(如福特、奥迪和梅赛德斯)和技术公司(如谷歌和优步)所展示的重大发展和进步，自动驾驶汽车(SVD)在军事和民用应用方面都受到了广泛的关注。自动车辆的成功运行依赖于多传感器的组合来确定它们的精确位置并感知周围环境(例如激光雷达、相机、雷达、全球导航卫星系统(GNSS)、惯性传感器和里程计)，复杂的算法来整理和解释所获取的多传感器数据，以及强大的处理器来执行所实施的算法并实时规划安全的前进路径。*除了成本、信任、可靠性、安全性和道德问题外，在广泛采用SDV的道路上还存在重大的技术障碍。例如，这些车辆采用的定位技术不够准确，不足以完全信任并用于安全关键情况。此外，现有的数字地图系统无法提供支持自动驾驶应用的周围环境的高度详细的地图。因此，开发一种能够传递高精度定位信息、高分辨率测绘周围环境和可靠路径规划的多传感器系统标定、数据融合和异质数据处理工作流程仍然是一个空白。换句话说，由于拥有一个校准不佳的多传感器系统板，所涉及的GNSS、惯性和基于视觉的传感器的集成和数据融合，在缺乏GNSS信息的情况下对车辆进行精确定位，高效处理用于详细绘制周围环境的大量多传感器数据，用于静态/动态障碍物检测的智能信息提取，以及实时/接近实时的决策和路径规划，这些挑战尚未被追求自己的自动驾驶汽车雄心的汽车行业和技术公司完全理解和解决。*为了克服这些挑战，并为自动驾驶车辆安全上路做好准备，本提案旨在开发一个全面的框架，用于多传感器系统校准、准确的多传感器数据融合、高效的数据处理、道路/障碍相关信息提取、周围环境的高细节地图绘制、决策和路径规划，同时满足自动驾驶车辆的需求。拟议的框架将为加拿大政府和汽车行业带来显著的经济、技术和社会效益。因此，它将提高SVD的安全性和可靠性，并促进其在非受控环境中的广泛采用。

During the last decade, self-driving vehicles (SVD) have received comprehensive attention in both military and civilian applications due to the significant developments and progress demonstrated by automobile manufacturers (e.g., Ford, Audi, and Mercedes) and technology companies (e.g., Google and Uber). The successful operation of autonomous vehicles relies on a combination of multi-sensors to determine their precise location and sense the environment around (e.g. LiDAR, Cameras, RADAR, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), inertial sensors, and odometers), sophisticated algorithms to collate and interpret the acquired multi-sensor data, and powerful processors to execute the implemented algorithms and plan a safe path forward in real time. ***In addition to cost, trust, reliability, security, and ethical issues, there are significant technical hurdles on the path to widespread adoption of SDV. For example, the employed positioning technology in these vehicles is not accurate enough to be solely trusted and used in safety-critical situations. Moreover, existing digital mapping systems cannot provide highly-detailed maps of surrounding environments that support self-driving applications. Therefore, the development of a multi-sensor system calibration, data fusion, and heterogeneous data processing workflow which is capable of delivering high-accuracy positioning information, high-resolution mapping of the surrounding environment, and reliable path planning is still missing. In other words, the challenges introduced by having a poorly-calibrated multi-sensor system board, the integration and data fusion of the involved GNSS, inertial, and vision-based sensor, precise localization of the vehicle in the absence of GNSS information, efficient processing of large volume multi-sensor data for detailed mapping of the surrounding environment, intelligent information extraction for static/dynamic obstacle detection, and real-time/near real-time decision making and path planning have not been fully understood and addressed by the automotive industry and technology companies pursuing their own self-driving car ambitions. ***In order to overcome these challenges and prepare self-driving vehicles to hit the roads safely, this proposal aims at developing a comprehensive framework for multi-sensor system calibration, accurate multi-sensor data fusion, and efficient data processing, road/obstacle-related information extraction, highly-detailed mapping of surrounding environments, decision-making, and path planning while addressing the demands of autonomous self-driving vehicles. The proposed framework will provide significant economic, technological, and social benefits to Canadian government and automotive industry. Hence, it will increase the safety and reliability of SVD and promotes their wide adoption in uncontrolled environments.