Video based localization for Bertha

In August 2013, the modified Mercedes-Benz SClass S500 Intelligent Drive (“Bertha”) completed the historic Bertha-Benz-Memorial-Route fully autonomously. The self-driving 103 km journey passed through urban and rural areas. The system used detailed geometric maps to supplement its online perception systems. A map based approach is only feasible if a precise, map relative localization is provided. The purpose of this paper is to give a survey on this corner stone of the system architecture. Two supplementary vision based localization methods have been developed. One of them is based on the detection of lane markings and similar road elements, the other exploits descriptors for point shaped features. A final filter step combines both estimates while handling out-of-sequence measurements correctly.