Survey on Ranging Sensors and Cooperative Techniques for Relative Positioning of Vehicles

Abstract

Future driver assistance systems will rely on accurate, reliable and continuous knowledge on the position of other road participants, including pedestrians, bicycles and other vehicles. The usual approach to tackle this requirement is to use on-board ranging sensors inside the vehicle. Radar, laser scanners or vision based systems are able to detect objects in their line-of-sight. In contrast to these non-cooperative ranging sensors, cooperative approaches follow a strategy in which other road participants actively support the estimation of the relative position. The limitations of on-board ranging sensors regarding their detection range and angle of view and the facility of blockage can be approached by using a cooperative approach based on vehicle-to-vehicle communication. The fusion of both, cooperative and non-cooperative strategies, seems to offer the largest benefits regarding accuracy, availability and robustness. This survey gives the reader a comprehensive review about the performance and limitations of commercially available radar sensors and laser scanners and a summary on the current research in the area of vision-based systems. Moreover, the state-of-the-art in GNSS-based vehicle localization techniques and the latest findings in vehicular communication are reviewed and put into the context of vehicle relative positioning.