Autonomous land vehicle navigation using millimeter wave radar

This paper discusses the use of a 77 GHz millimeter wave radar as a guidance sensor for autonomous land vehicle navigation. A test vehicle has been fitted with a radar and encoders that give steer angle and velocity. An extended Kalman filter optimally fuses the radar range and bearing measurements with vehicle control signals to give estimated position and variance as the vehicle moves around a test site. The effectiveness of this data fusion is compared with encoders alone and with a satellite positioning system. Consecutive scans have been combined to give a radar image of the surrounding environment. Data in this format are invaluable for future work on collision detection and map building navigation.