Current position detector for vehicle

• US 8,447,518 B2
• Filed: 05/18/2011
• Issued: 05/21/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 05/19/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: DENSO Corporation
• Original Assignee: DENSO Corporation
• Inventors: Tanino, Hideki
• Primary Examiner(s): Tarcza, Thomas
• Assistant Examiner(s): Lee, Tyler J
• Application Number:
  US13/110,187
• Publication Number:
  US 20110288772A1
• Time in Patent Office: 734 Days
• Field of Search: 701/472, 701/469, 701/480, 701/518, 701/534, 701/536, 702/151
• US Class Current: 701/472
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/47 the supplementary measurement being an inertial measurement, e.g. tightly coupled inertial

Abstract

A current position detector for a vehicle includes: an angular speed sensor; a speed sensor; a GPS receiver; a traveling trajectory estimating element for estimating a relative trajectory based on an orientation change amount and a traveling distance, and for estimating a traveling trajectory based on the relative trajectory and a GPS signal; and an error estimating element for estimating and correcting each error of an angular speed signal, a speed signal and the GPS signal. The error estimating element estimates a gain error of the angular speed signal such that an attachment angle gain error attributed to an attachment angle of the angular speed sensor and an angular speed gain error attributed to a non-linear gain property of the angular speed sensor are independently estimated.

Claims

1. A current position detector for a vehicle comprising:

an angular speed sensor for outputting an angular speed signal corresponding to a rotation angular speed of the vehicle;

a speed sensor of outputting a speed signal corresponding to a traveling speed of the vehicle;

a GPS receiver for receiving an electric wave from a GPS satellite and for outputting a GPS signal, which provides to specify an absolute position and an heading of the vehicle;

a traveling trajectory estimating element for estimating a relative trajectory of the vehicle based on an orientation change amount and a traveling distance, and for estimating a traveling trajectory of the vehicle based on the relative trajectory of the vehicle and the GPS signal, wherein the orientation change amount is calculated from the angular speed signal, and the traveling distance is calculated from the speed signal; and

an error estimating element for estimating each error of the angular speed signal, the speed signal and the GPS signal with using a difference between the relative trajectory, the traveling trajectory and the GPS signal as an observation value, and for correcting each error of the angular speed signal, the speed signal and the GPS signal based on estimated corresponding error,

wherein the error estimating element estimates a gain error of the angular speed signal in such a manner that an attachment angle gain error attributed to an attachment angle of the angular speed sensor to the vehicle and an angular speed gain error attributed to a non-linear gain property of the angular speed sensor with respect to the angular speed are independently estimated.

2. The current position detector according to claim 1,

wherein the error estimating element calculates a first correction amount according to the attachment angle gain error and a second correction amount according to the angular speed gain error,

wherein the error estimating element corrects an error of the attachment angle of the angular speed sensor with using the first correction amount,

wherein the error estimating element corrects an error of the non-linear gain property of the angular speed sensor,

wherein the error estimating element estimates an heading error according to the first correction amount and the second correction amount,

where the error estimating element corrects an heading amount with using the heading error, and

wherein the heading amount is calculated based on the GPS signal.

3. The current position detector according to claim 2,

wherein the orientation change amount is defined as D, and the angular speed gain error previously estimated is defined as ε

Sa_t-1, and

wherein the error estimating element calculates the second correction amount in such a manner that an orientation error attributed to the angular speed gain error is modeled as D² ε

Sa_t-1.

4. The current position detector according to claim 2,

wherein the orientation change amount is defined as D, and the attachment angle gain error previously estimated is defined as ε

Sb_t-1, and

wherein the error estimating element calculates the first correction amount in such a manner that an orientation error attributed to the attachment angle gain error is modeled as D ε

Sb_t-1.

5. The current position detector according to claim 1,

wherein the error estimating element estimates the attachment angle gain error with using a first function, and

wherein the error estimating element estimates the angular speed gain error with using a second function, which is different from the first function.

6. The current position detector according to claim 1,

wherein the error estimating element includes an attachment angle gain error estimating element, a determining element, and an angular speed gain error estimating element,

wherein the attachment angle gain error estimating element estimates the attachment angle gain error and calculates the first correction amount with using a first Kalman filter, which provides to executes estimation of the attachment angle gain error and calculation of the first correction amount,

wherein the determining element determines whether a diagonal component of an error covariance matrix in the first Kalman filter is smaller than a predetermined threshold value after the attachment angle gain error estimating element estimates the attachment angle gain error and calculates the first correction amount,

wherein the diagonal component corresponds to the attachment angle gain error,

wherein the angular speed gain error estimating element estimates the angular speed gain error and calculates the second correction amount with using a second Kalman filter after the determining element determines that the diagonal component is smaller than the predetermined threshold value, and

wherein the second Kalman filter provides to executes estimation of the angular speed gain error and calculation of the second correction amount.

7. The current position detector according to claim 6,

wherein the angular speed gain error estimating element estimates the angular speed gain error with using the second Kalman filter according to each estimated error of the angular speed signal, the speed signal and the GPS signal and an error covariance value when the attachment angle gain error estimating element estimates the attachment angle gain error and calculates the first correction amount with using the first Kalman filter, and

wherein the error covariance value is calculated when the error estimating element calculates the first correction amount.