Producing a Three-dimensional Road Map for Car Navigation

Recently, information technology (IT) has been introduced to social systems for various purposes. Especially, important information for our living has been brought by geographic information systems (GIS). Particularly, in the field of car navigation, frequent update of a map is requested for providing a driver with comprehensive and accurate geographic information having a driver's view. In this paper, we propose a simple and useful method of making a 3D geographical map by mapping onto a given 2D map the data measured in the street using video cameras and several sensors on a car. The function of the proposed method is to make a 3D map by fitting measured data to a 2D map, and not to make the 2D map. In the method, the data of road surfaces (road signs, directional arrows, etc.) and building textures are obtained simultaneously by the measurement system consisting of several video cameras, a distance pulse generator, and a GPS. In order to evaluate the proposed method, we performed experiments at Munich (Germany), and Fukuoka (Japan), and produced a highly realistic 3D map, which confirms the availability of the proposed method