US 12,266,187 B2
Visual wireless based positioning exploiting multipath for outdoor positioning
Brent Navin Roger Bacchus, Sterling Heights, MI (US); Rakesh Kumar, Mississauga (CA); and Bo Yu, Troy, MI (US)
Assigned to GM GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY OPERATIONS LLC, Detroit, MI (US)
Filed by GM Global Technology Operations LLC, Detroit, MI (US)
Filed on Jan. 28, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/587,699.
Prior Publication US 2023/0245464 A1, Aug. 3, 2023
Int. Cl. G06K 9/00 (2022.01); B60W 40/105 (2012.01); G06V 20/58 (2022.01); H04W 88/10 (2009.01)
CPC G06V 20/58 (2022.01) [B60W 40/105 (2013.01); H04W 88/10 (2013.01); B60W 2420/403 (2013.01); B60W 2420/408 (2024.01); B60W 2554/4041 (2020.02); B60W 2554/4049 (2020.02)] 11 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. An automobile vehicle visual wireless-based positioning system, comprising:
an automobile vehicle having a radio receiver and a transmitter;
a map containing candidate locations of access-points (APs) and access-point corresponding media-access-control (MAC) IDs, the map also identifying signal reflectors;
a vehicle on-board positioning system of the automobile vehicle collecting wireless positioning measurements from detected ones of the multiple Aps, the transmitter operating to transmit the wireless positioning measurements to a Cloud-Edge in real-time;
a wireless range sensor determining different multiple ranges of various detected APs visible to the automobile vehicle, wherein the multiple ranges for each of the various detected AP's includes a long-range measurement and a short-range measurement, and wherein the short-range measurement is shorter than the long-range measurement;
a MAC association process for associating a MAC ID with individual ones of the various detected APs at the different ranges;
a Line-of-Sight-No-Line-of-Sight (LOS-NLOS) association process performed on outputs from the MAC association process to resolve ambiguity between multiple AP locations to determine which identified AP is a real AP, the real AP defining an AP that does not include data from a reflection or data returned from one of the signal reflectors, wherein when one of the signal reflectors is disposed between a predicted automobile vehicle pose and a mapped AP location, then the long-range measurement is associated with that mapped AP such that the long-range measurement of the mapped AP defines a reflection, and when one of the signal reflectors does not fall between the predicted automobile vehicle pose and a mapped AP location, the short range measurements is associated with the mapped AP and the mapped AP defines a LOS feature;
an image collection feature identifying image data visible to the automobile vehicle;
an image feature extraction process receiving the image data to extract visual features from the image data;
a real-time feature matching process for matching the visual features with data from the map;
a data collection process, wherein vehicle data collected by the data collection process includes operating and location data from a vehicle inertial measurement unit (IMU). a vehicle wheel speed sensor (WSS), and a global positioning system (GPS) device; and
a filter receiving an output from the LOS-NLOS association process, an output from the real-time feature matching process element, and the vehicle data from the data collection process to generate an automobile vehicle pose.