Where Am I: Localization and 3D Maps for Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

The nuts and bolts of autonomous driving find its root in devising the localization strategy. Lidar as one of the newest technologies developed in the recent years, provides rich information about the environment in the form of point cloud data which can be used for localization. In this paper, we discuss a localization approach which generates a 3D map from Lidar’s point cloud data using Normal Distribution Transform (NDT) mapping. We use our own dataset collected using our self driving car KIA Soul EV equipped with Lidar and cameras. Once the 3D map has been generated, we have used NDT matching for localizing the self driving car.