Early Evaluation of Road Width Estimation on Rapid Road Map Survey System Using GPS Trajectories as Collective Intelligence

Electronic maps on current car navigation system is updated after surveying works, generating and editing map data when a road is newly opened to traffic. Therefore, long time is needed to update the map is completed. Also, online map updating service is now available, however, only expressways and highways are reflected for the map updating since surveying works and editing maps by hand is needed. Therefore, we have proposed a car navigation system that copes with newly constructed roads by estimating locations and shapes of new roads using many trajectories of vehicles as corrective intelligence measured by GPS. In this paper, we report about our new algorithm to estimate the number of lanes, and experiment on the new algorithm.

1. Introduction

Electronic maps of current car navigation system is updated by distributing map data which is generated and edited after road survey works when new road is opened to public traffic. If built-in map is not updated, there are some problems in sections in newly opened roads such as current position is unstable due to map matching does not work correctly, the navigation system cannot guide efficient route and toll in new toll roads. Also, traffic information by VICS (Vehicle Information and Communication Service) cannot be fetched and displayed. These problems are related to essential functions of car navigation system.