Position system copes with GPS outages

OxTS has developed an easy to use and cost-effective vehicle guidance system that can already be used for the commercial application of autonomous vehicles.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems are already being fitted in new car models to assist the driver and avoid dangerous manoeuvres or collisions.

Gradually, driver assistance systems will play an ever more important part until one day we see fully autonomous cars.

Driverless cars has come a huge step closer when six self-driving cars crossed the finish line of the DARPA Urban Challenge on 3rd November 2007 after driving through a mock city for six hours without causing accidents or violating traffic laws.

However, a bumpy road lies ahead on the journey to develop an autonomous car that is more reliable than a human driver.

There will be some key factors which will determine the widespread use of robotic technology for commercial applications.

Price and usability of the technology will definitely be among these factors.

OxTS has developed an easy to use and cost-effective vehicle guidance system that can already be used for the commercial application of autonomous vehicles.

The urban setting of the DARPA competition demonstrated the need for a navigation system that was able to reliably guide the vehicles, even when GPS signals were blocked or reflected near buildings.

That is why most of the teams opted for a tightly coupled inertial and GPS navigation system which continues to give position and orientation measurements even during prolonged GPS outages.

It was not surprising that all of the teams that made it to the finish line of the Urban Challenge had some sort of GPS-aided inertial navigation system onboard their autonomous vehicle.

OxTS has developed a GPS and inertial navigation system which was used by several DARPA teams in the Grand Challenge 2005 as well as in this year's urban competition.

The RT3000 system provides highly accurate measurements of position and orientation, which is essential to navigate the vehicle and invaluable for giving corrections to the vision, LIDAR and other sensors.

The aim of OxTS is to supply customers with Inertial and GPS navigation systems that are supplied in one compact box, are easy to use and cost-effective.

The RT3000 systems run complex real-time algorithms for blending GPS and inertial measurements, leading to highly accurate results.

Test drivers are currently used to test the durability of vehicles and its components, which usually involves very repetitive tests that could easily be performed by robotic vehicles.

Autonomously driving vehicles are also used to test cars to the limit of their capabilities without putting human test drivers at risk.

OxTS has developed a reliable, accurate and competitively priced GPS-aided inertial navigation system that is already used in many unmanned vehicle projects.

By trying to reduce the price of the traditionally expensive inertial navigation systems, the company is able to provide a vehicle guidance solution that is easy to use and cost-efficient for autonomous car applications on a larger scale.

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