Patent ID: 6560531
Filing Date: 2003-05-06
Classification: G01C,G08G,G09B

Abstract:
A method for determining a position of a vehicle along a road, the method comprising the steps of:forming a candidate pool that contains a plurality of candidate map paths, wherein each candidate map path is a data representation of a path along an actual road; and wherein each candidate map path represents a possible path along which the vehicle has traveled; and eliminating all but one of said plurality of candidate map paths from said candidate pool by repeatedly performing the steps of: generalizing to a given degree of generalization a data representation of an actual vehicle path to form a generalized actual vehicle path; generalizing to the given degree of generalization each candidate map path in said candidate pool to form a corresponding generalized candidate map path; comparing each generalized candidate map path in the candidate pool to the generalized actual vehicle path; eliminating from the candidate pool each generalized map path that does not match the generalized actual vehicle path to a defined degree; and if more than one candidate map path remains in the candidate pool, decreasing the given degree of generalization for greater resolution in the generalized actual vehicle path and the generalized candidate map path.