GPS World, February 2019

MARKETWATCH MARKET WATCH 2 TRANSPORTATION Racelogic Takes Auto Testing Indoors R acelogic is launching Tesla Granted US Patent for Positioning Tech T esla has developed a technology aimed at providing more accurate positioning for autonomous cars by sharing data between vehicles according to a U S patent application The patent Technologies for vehicle positioning was filed in 2017 and made public in December 2018 Solutions include cameras detecting matching locations and using other vehicles in its fleet as cooperative reference stations to share raw GNSS data and make positioning corrections Tesla describes in the patent The inventions increase such positioning accuracy via determining and applying offsets corrections in various ways or via sharing of raw positioning data between a plurality of devices where at least one knows its location sufficiently accurately for use in differential algorithms Techniques include a reference station sharing a positional offset with an automobile a reference station calculating and sharing a set of parameters offsets and corrections for various error components including atmospheric orbital and clock a reference station sharing its raw GNSS data so that vehicles can remove errors through differencing or other calculations Tesla also would correct GPS data by matching camera data with vision maps to detect the exact location of a vehicle With this vision map matching localization approach a location estimate is varied until the location estimate makes a camerareported 34 GPS WORLD WWW GPSWORLD COM FEBRUARY 2019 lane boundary coincide with a map reported lane boundaries the patent reads a n e w i n d o or positioning solution for accurate position and velocity in the absence of any GNSS signals such as inside parking garages The new VBOX Indoor Positioning System will consist of a network of fixed beacons communicating with a smal l receiver mounted on the roof of the vehicle which is connected to an existing VBOX The receiver computes its position 100 times a second to around 5 centimeters real mean squared rms accuracy The system can be used on its own or with an internal inertial measurement unit IMU to improve the velocity accuracy VBOX data acquisition systems are used for measuring the speed and position of a moving vehicle Based on a range of high performance GPS receivers VBOX dataloggers can record high accuracy GPS speed measurements distance acceleration braking distance heading slip angle lap times position cornering forces and more Racelogic engineers are working closely with VBOX customers to develop the solution which allows the same test equipment and sof tware that has traditionally been limited to outdoor use to be used anywhere that satellites coverage is limited or completely unavailable such as in a parking garage The VBOX seamlessly switches between outdoors and indoors allowing testing to continue whatever the environment and VBOX users to make use of their original hardware and software applications The beacon left and example placement Diagram U S Patent Office Images Racelogic Schematic of Teslas system shows two vehicles 102 120 feeding data to a network a server and a reference station