Positioning has evolved from being a commodity in vehicles to aid the driver in the navigation process to becoming a key enabling technology for the automated driving roadmap. Automated (SAE-L3 to L5) and semi-automated (SAE-L2 to L3) vehicles that are entering the market need to know their position much better than today’s navigation systems. They need to use more comprehensive and precise positioning systems, telling the vehicle not only where it is on the map but exactly where it is in a lane.

The accuracy of GNSS receivers is often not enough. Moreover, it is compromised in urban canyons and under foliage by multipath, non-line-of-sight or complete blockage of GNSS signals. Thus, the key to automated functionalities lies in a major part within the vehicles’ sensor suite. This suite is comprised of a combination (determined by the vehicle manufacturers) of radar, camera, lidar, inertial and GNSS, with GNSS being the only sensor to provide absolute position, velocity, and time. As such, it is one of the most important key enabler technologies to know precisely where the vehicle is and whether it is safe to activate the automated functions. Moreover, it is the main technology that enables cooperative automated driving functions such as: Autonomous navigation (up-to-date-high definition map handling), Cooperative perception (extend local perception with sensor data shared by elements around), Cooperative maneuvers (interaction with other vehicles for cooperative decisions) and cooperative safety (interaction with vulnerable road users).

A common target of accuracy for these functions is around 20-50 cm 95% of the time. Galileo’s system accuracy is essential to meet these objectives and thus to play a crucial role as automated mobility enabler.

In this sense ACCURATE project will develop a high precision positioning OBU, that can be integrated in systems required by any Car, Truck or Bus OEM, based on tight heterogenous sensor fusion that will be easily integrable on Automated Driving platforms for any vehicle for reaching SAE L4 and L5 automated driving levels