Evidential Grid-Based Tracking and Mapping

Tracking and mapping the local environment form the basis of an autonomous vehicle system. They are often realized separately using occupancy grids, which do not require object or shape assumptions, and model-based object tracking algorithms. Many approaches require a binary classification of the sensor measurements into coming from a static or from a dynamic object, as otherwise inconsistencies between the different representations are likely to occur. This paper presents grid-based tracking and mapping (GTAM), a low-level grid-based approach that simultaneously estimates the static and the dynamic environment, their uncertainties, velocities, as well as information about free space. GTAM works on the level of grid cells, rather than creating object hypotheses. A particle filter is used to obtain continuous cell velocity distributions for all obstacles. Continuous evidences in a Dempster–Shafer model are derived without requiring a binary pre-classification of the sensor measurements. Results and evaluations using a vehicle moving in real dynamic street environments demonstrate the performance of the presented approach.