Visual Positioning System Intoduction Over the past ten years, Global Positioning System (GPS) has found widespread use in consumer vehicles. However, due to the satellite links required for obtaining a positional fix, accuracy and robustness are sensitive to environmental factors such as tall buildings, mountainous terrain or adverse weather. Recently, efforts have been made to improve on these issues by adding ground-ground communication channels, as used in Assisted GPS and Differential GPS. However, even these improvements are of limited use in difficult situations such as parking lots, and still rely on outside communication. In our work, a visual approach to local navigation is presented. Data from a vehicle mounted camera is analyzed to extract vehicle motion parameters, which are then used to keep track of the vehicle’s relative position. In combination with standard communication based systems, this allows for more robust and accurate navigation. Alt...
