For automated driving, which ranges all the way up to the autonomous-driving level, it’s essential that information about the current position of the vehicle is known to the car’s systems. This task may sound trivial, but a closer look reveals its complexity.
A classical navigation system provides the absolute GPS position of the vehicle in a global coordinate system such as the WGS84 geodetic reference system. This is suitable for navigation applications to determine the current vehicle position on a map database, and perform tasks such as route guidance, or even compile an electronic horizon that passes information about the course of the road in front of the vehicle to predictive driver-assistance features.