A feasibility study into the use of radar technology for environment mapping on autonomous vehicles

One of the key challenges in developing fully autonomous vehicles is the question of the navigation of

driverless cars. Just as with human drivers, a vehicle must know its precise location in order to know how it

should behave, where it should go next and what challenges may lie ahead. Traditional GPS technology is not

accurate enough to be used in such a critical task, and as such prototype driverless vehicles have so far relied

on lidar technology. Lidar is a laser based technology that measures and maps the area around a vehicle and is

able to create a map of the surrounding area. Though the data is very accurate, the nature of light based

technologies means that any poor conditions such as fog, heavy rain or snow, or dust have a serious impact on

the reliability of the sensor. Navtech will therefore use this project to investigate the feasibility of producing a

radar based system that will provide an equivalent performance to the lidar technology.