New Algorithm Helps Autonomous Vehicles Find Themselves, Summer or Winter

         

            Vehicles are being equipped with plenty of new technologies as the automotive industry adapts to the rapid technological advances. A big part of technology that is used daily is GPS. GPS Is important for autonomous vehicles and without it they would lose themselves easily and possibly not even function to move.  However, good news has recently been discovered. A team at Caltech has created a functioning algorithm that allows autonomous vehicles to identify their location by observing the terrain surrounding the vehicles. To make things even more interesting, they further discovered that the technology is effective regardless of seasonal changes. In the 1960s a general process called visual terrain-relative navigation (VTRN) was created. This process took satellite images that have been collected and compared them with nearby terrain which helped the autonomous find themselves. However, with this process, there was one major downfall. The current VTRN requires both the terrain and images provided by the databases to be closely matched up. For example, fallen leaves would cause image distortion and throw errors to the system. Fortunately, the team at Caltech created a solution to overcome this problem. They utilized deep learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to filter seasonal content that would throw errors to the current VRTN systems. This process is known as “self-supervised learning”. The majority of computer-vision strategies require human interactions who vigilantly create large data sets that teach an algorithm to understand what it is seeing, but this one allows the algorithm to educate itself. The AI scans for patterns by focusing on smaller details and features that human interaction would more than likely miss. This doesn't stop just at everyday vehicles; it goes beyond Earth boundaries into space missions. The entry, descent, and landing (EDL) system uses VTRN for the first time on Mars to assist in landing at the Jezero Crater. This area was known to be too dangerous for safe entry. The team utilized Martian polar regions on Mars because they have similar intense seasonal changes like Earth as there's no GPS on Mars. The new system would improve navigation to assist in scientific objectives like water.  

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210623141655.htm