Lateral Position Measurement Based on Vehicles’ Longitudinal Displacement

The lateral position of a vehicle in its lane is crucial information required to develop intelligent assistant driving systems. Current studies reveal this information by mixing multiple sources such as cameras, LiDAR or accurate GNSS. Because these systems are not efficient in some degraded weather conditions, a cooperative Vehicle-to-Infrastructure sensor has been developed to help to determine lateral position of a vehicle in its lane. In this paper, the authors propose a completely new and original way to estimate lateral position of the vehicle in its lane using the longitudinal displacement. Using a system based on a hyper-frequency interaction between a transceiver module embedded in the vehicle and passive transponders that can be integrated in the road, for instance under the lane markings, a new signal processing algorithm is presented in order to determine the lateral distance between the vehicle and the transponder axis. The sensor has been tested in an external environment and has shown an estimated lateral distance error of 8 cm at most.