Next Generation Data Fusion on the On Board Unit

In the ACCURATE project, we are developing an On Board Unit (OBU) to enable highly automated driving at SAE levels 4 and 5 by making use of EGNSS. On the path towards autonomous vehicles, precise and reliable absolute positioning is no longer a convenience but a critical requirement in order to stay inside the lane and avoid accidents. This shall be achieved under a variety of conditions described in the context of an extensive Operational Design Domain. Constrained environments with blocked or reflected GNSS signals, which are typical for urban scenarios, are particularly challenging for a GNSS-based positioning system. In order to overcome such limiting factors and satisfy the performance requirements regarding accuracy, integrity and availability, the ACCURATE OBU incorporates data from multiple sensors, which is fused on two separate levels.

The first level of sensor fusion will run on Valeo’s Vulcano-5G Telematics Control Unit. This TCU integrates a 5G cellular modem which provides the necessary connectivity and an embedded application processor. On this processor, Hexagon’s software positioning engine, which performs the absolute positioning and the vehicle signal manager will be executed.

The second level of sensor fusion will run on an embedded PC called the Localization Unit. RTMaps from Intempora will be executed on this embedded PC as high performance middleware to acquire and process in real time all the data streams : lidars, cameras and processed data from the TCU. Matching algorithms developed by VALEO and many other specific knowledge of all partners are integrated as RTMaps component in this project.