Patent ID: 8244455
Filing Date: 2012-08-14
Classification: G01C,G01S

Abstract:
1. A method for determining a position of a vehicle with respect to a terrain, the method comprising: accumulating data received from a sensor device regarding an occupancy of a spatial region between the vehicle and a first geographic region of the terrain; generating an evidence grid from the sensor data that describes the occupancy of the spatial region, wherein the evidence grid comprises a first set of cells that indicate an occupancy by an object and a second set of cells that does not; aggregating the occupancy from the first set of cells and the second set of cells thereby establishing a joint probability that a reflection from the first set of cells and the second set of cells matches the sensor data; identifying the position of the first geographic region of the terrain based on the evidence grid and previously compiled reference data; and determining the position of the vehicle based on the position of the first geographic region of the terrain with respect to the previously compiled reference data.