Cooperative Relative Positioning using Signals of Opportunity and Inertial and Visual Modalities

The global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is primarily employed for positioning by most modern navigation systems. However, the application requirements of fully autonomous vehicles cannot be satisfied solely by GNSS and thus a combination of positioning and navigation approaches need to be explored. This work investigates how reliable relative positioning can be achieved in GNSS-challenged application scenarios using a combination of signals of opportunity (SOPs), as well as inertial and vision data. The proposed cooperative relative positioning system (CRPS) exploits this data for real-time positioning, and employs a vehicle tracking algorithm to accurately estimate the vehicle’s trajectory in space and time without the use of any GNSS information. Experiments conducted in an outdoor setting demonstrate the applicability of the proposed CRPS and its performance against standalone positioning approaches including GNSS.