Methods for generating High Precision Digital Maps using Circular Arc Splines

• Applicant: Dr. Georg Maier
• Subject Area: Automation, Mechatronics, Control Systems, Intelligent Technical Systems, Robotics ; Theoretical Computer Science
• Term: from 2012 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 225923277

Arc splines, i.e. curves consisting of circular arcs and straight line segments, provide offset and distance calculations in a closed form and allow a compact representation. Thus, their usage for representing lane courses in high precision digital maps has proven its worth in recent research projects.However, this application implicates modelling, theoretical and algorithmic requirements of the arc spline approximation, which have hardly been considered until now. Current approaches for fitting arc splines subject to a minimal number of segments deal with the supremum norm - without any smoothing in a least squares manner ¿ and do not consider any further constraints, such as curvature restrictions. Also, fitting of cyclic structures and dealing with crossings and self-intersections have to be investigated. The resulting methods shall provide a solid basis for a completely automatic map development supplying good scalability properties.Therefore, the submitted project aims to develop a novel and generalized approach to arc spline fitting satisfying the algorithmic and theoretical requirements deduced from the application.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants