Improving poor GPS area localization for intelligent vehicles

Precise positioning plays a key role in successful navigation of autonomous vehicles. A fusion architecture of Global Positioning System (GPS) and Laser-SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) is widely adopted. While Laser-SLAM is known for its highly accurate localization, GPS is still required to overcome accumulated error and give SLAM a required reference coordinate. However, there are multiple cases where GPS signal quality is too low or not available such as in multi-story parking, tunnel or urban area due to multipath propagation issue etc. This paper proposes an alternative approach for these areas with WiFi Fingerprinting technique to replace GPS. Result obtained from WiFi Fingerprinting will then be fused with Laser-SLAM to maintain the general architecture, allow seamless adaptation of vehicle to the environment.