Hybrid Procedure Strategy for Vehicle Localization System: Design and Prototyping

This work presents an estimation strategy that provides a good localization and a high accurate measurement of the distance run by a public transport vehicle. To this aim, the vehicle is equipped with a Global Positioning System (GPS) sensor, a wheel speed sensor, to measure the vehicle velocity, and a gyroscope, to measure the yaw velocity. A model-based hybrid procedure has been proposed, based on the GPS signal re- liability, guaranteeing robustness for temporary loss of satellite signal. In particular, the algorithm switches between a Kalman filter strategy, if the GPS is available, and an open loop model-based estimation, if it is not available. The algorithm has been tested both in simulation and with experimental tests. The results are here analyzed. In particular, a prototype has been realized to test the strategy on urban and extra urban circuits in Benevento (Italy). The experiments are conducted on a Lancia Kappa 2.0 vehicle, by means of a dSpace MicroAutoBox electronic control unit.