The researchers say that the system combines GPS signals with data from sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes to determine the position of a vehicle six feet of its location, a dramatic reduction in the margin of error current 50 feet. The system can be installed in any vehicle at low cost, say researchers from Spain Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where the system was developed.
"We managed to improve the determination of the position of a vehicle in critical cases by between 50 and 90 percent, depending on the degree of signal degradation and duration affects the degradation of the GPS receiver," David Martin, a researcher at the Laboratory of Intelligence Systems, said in a statement describing the project.
The system aims to fight against the greatest challenge for conventional GPS systems in urban areas: the disruption or loss of the satellite signal due to interference from buildings, trees, and tunnels. The new system uses contextual information and an algorithm which eliminates deviations caused by the degradation or loss of the satellite signal.
The researchers installed a prototype of a "smart car" in order to capture and interpret all available information when driving a car. The team provides system applications in automotive systems without driver, such as those currently being developed by Google and a handful of automakers.
"Future applications will benefit from the technology that we are currently working on include cooperative driving, maneuvering automatic pedestrian safety, or cooperative autonomous vehicles collision avoidance systems," the team said.
Ultimately, the team hopes to develop a system that exploits the sensors embedded in smartphones, such as an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer and GPS, as well as taking advantage of communication tools such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GSM.
