New Radar System for Accurate, Autonomous Vehicle Driving in the Snow

Researchers from MIT Lincoln Laboratory achieved real-time, nighttime, centimeter-level vehicle localization while driving a test vehicle at highway speeds - over roads whose lane markings were hidden by the snow. The SUV used in the demonstration, held in a mid-March snowstorm of this year, was equipped with their system that employs a novel ground-penetrating radar technique. Many self-localizing vehicles use optical systems to determine their position. The MIT lab developed a sensor that uses very high frequency (VHF) radar reflections of underground features to generate a baseline map of a road's subsurface. This map is generated during a Localizing Ground-Penetrating Radar (LGPR)-equipped vehicle's drive along a roadway and becomes the reference for future travels over that stretch of road. On a revisit, the LGPR mounted beneath the vehicle measures the current reflections of the road's subsurface features, and its algorithm estimates the vehicle's location by comparing those current GPR readings to the baseline map stored in the system's memory. The LGPR's main component is a waterproof closely spaced 12-element antenna array that uses a VHF stepped-frequency continuous wave to penetrate deeper beneath the ground than can typical GPR systems.

Transcript

00:00:06 MIT Lincoln Laboratory has invented a new way to keep autonomous vehicles in their lanes even during snowstorms current systems use GPS fused with camera and lidar optical sensors rely on road markings and prior maps of the surroundings for localization when optical sensors can't see key surfaces and markings or when the surfaces the maps depend on change that autonomous

00:00:41 vehicles can't stay in their Lane l GPR is complementary to current optical and GPS localization modes localizing ground-penetrating radar scans deep into the roadbed to register its current position to an existing subsurface map l GPRS ultra-low power scans penetrate snow fog heavy rain and dust conditions where existing optical approaches fail MIT Lincoln Laboratory x' simple

00:01:16 uniquely designed GPR includes identical closely spaced elements L GPR has demonstrated four centimeter in lane accuracy at 60 miles per hour L GPR has now demonstrated similar accuracy on snow-covered roads where no road marking is invisible starting with a subsurface map created on a clear day MIT Lincoln Laboratory demonstrated real-time localization of a vehicle at highway

00:01:49 speeds during a nighttime snowstorm side-by-side measurements from the nighttime snow storm tracking run and the daytime clear baseline map show just how similar the data sets are localizing ground-penetrating radar complements existing technology to achieve the vision of safe autonomous vehicles you