Creating Enhanced Maps for Lane-Level Vehicle Navigation

The concept of enhanced maps (Emaps) was introduced with one main objective: It should characterize roads, first, with more completeness and, second, with more accuracy than standard maps to fulfill the requirements of new challenging road safety applications and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). This paper introduces a paradigm for Emap definition and creation on which every road lane is represented and topologically connected to the rest of lanes. Following this approach, a number of Emaps have been created in France, Germany, and Sweden. The experiments carried out in these test sites with the Emaps show the capability of our Emap definition to assist with the determination of the vehicle position at the lane level. Details of the processes of extraction and connection of the road segments are given in the core of this paper, as well as a discussion of the elaboration process and future guidelines in the conclusion.