2009 International Technical Meeting
Session E3: Autonomous Vehicle Navigation

Title: Performance Analysis of a Closely Coupled GPS/INS Relative Positioning Architecture for Automated Ground Vehicle Convoys
Author(s): W. Travis, D.M. Bevly, Auburn University

A relative positioning software architecture incorporating inertial, range, and phase measurements has been developed to enhance the ability and accuracy of path following for autonomous ground vehicles in a convoy. GPS carrier measurements are fused with INS systems on board each vehicle to exploit the temporal and spacial error correlation of GPS signals within the same region and determine a high precision relative position vector between moving vehicles in the convoy. A discussion of the difficulties encountered in a ground vehicle environment is presented, along with the derivation of the algorithms which are to run on the convoy vehicles. An increase in robustness of the position solution is seen, and the relative position solution shows the ability to bridge short GPS outages.

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