A Study on Vehicular Positioning Technologies for Smart/Green Cars

스마트/그린형 자동차의 위치정보시스템에 관한 연구

Energy efficiency and safe mobility are the two key constituents of the future automobile. The technologies that enable these features are now heavily dependent upon information and communication technology rather than traditional auto-mechanical technology. This paper presents an exploratory project 'Smart&Green Vehicle Project' at Western Michigan University which is to improve the geographical location accuracy of vehicles and to study various applications of making such location data available. Global Positioning System (GPS), Inertial Navigation System (INS), Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) technology, and data fusion among these technologies are investigated. Testing and evaluation is done on systems which will gather vehicular positioning data during GPS signal loss. Vehicles in urban settings do not acquire accurate positioning data from GPS alone; therefore there is a need for exploration into technology that can assist GPS in urban settings. The goal of this project is to improve the accuracy of positioning data during a loss of GPS signal. Controlled experiments are performed to gather data which aided in assessing the feasibility of these technologies for use in vehicular platforms.