×

Apparatus and program for finding vehicle position

  • US 8,180,566 B2
  • Filed: 05/14/2009
  • Issued: 05/15/2012
  • Est. Priority Date: 05/15/2008
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
Patent Images

1. A position finding apparatus comprising:

  • a position information acquisition unit for acquiring absolute position information indicative of an absolute position of a subject vehicle;

    a relative travel information acquisition unit for acquiring travel information on relative travel of the subject vehicle,a road data acquisition unit for acquiring information on road links and road width;

    a candidate finding unit for finding, based on the absolute position information derived from the position information acquisition unit, one or more position candidates of a current vehicle position on a road link after extracting at least one road link that is possibly traveled by a subject vehicle from among multiple road links acquired by the road data acquisition unit;

    a link series finding unit for finding, in association with respective position candidates derived from the candidate finding unit, a series of road links extending from a candidate road link that has the position candidate based on the information on the road links derived from the road data acquisition unit;

    a locus finding unit for finding a center locus of travelable area in the series of road links that is indicative of a center of the travelable area based on calculation of the travelable area for the subject vehicle by utilizing the information on road width derived from the road data acquisition unit after the series of road links is found by the link series finding unit;

    a position candidate update unit for updating the position candidate of the current vehicle position based on the travel information on the relative travel of the subject vehicle;

    a travel position estimation unit for estimating a travel position of the subject vehicle based on the absolute position derived from the position information acquisition unit;

    an evaluation unit for performing evaluation of the position candidate on the series of road links based on a distance between the estimated travel position derived from the travel position estimation unit and the center locus derived from the locus finding unit;

    a current position finding unit for finding the current vehicle position of the subject vehicle on the candidate road link after selecting one of the position candidates according to an evaluation result of each of the position candidates by the evaluation unit; and

    a locus calculation unit for calculating a travel locus of the subject vehicle based on the travel information derived from the travel information acquisition unit, whereinthe travel position estimation unit selects, at a predetermined timing, a most matching center locus relative to the travel locus derived from the locus calculation unit from among multiple center loci derived from the locus finding unit, andthe travel position estimation unit sets a matching point on the selected most matching center locus and finds, as the estimated travel position, a position resulting from defining the matching point as a start point of the travel locus that is derived from the locus calculation unit, instead of finding the estimated travel position of the subject vehicle based on the absolute position information derived from the position information acquisition unit.

View all claims
  • 1 Assignment
Timeline View
Assignment View
    ×
    ×