Y3: Oral Presentation C Friday, 11:30 am – 12:00 pm C Lake Superior Ballroom O

DGPS Based Intelligent Vehicle Initiative: “Seeing” a Geospatial Database

Max Donath
University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies
211 Mechanical Engineering
111 Church Street Southeast
Minneapolis, MN  55455
donath@umn.edu

Poor visibility conditions lead to a significant number of crashes each year, especially in the winter. A system will be presented, which provides the driver with a high fidelity representation of the local geospatial landscape through a Head Up Display. As the vehicle moves along a stretch of highway, the vehicle's Differential GPS derived position is used to pull data from this centimeter accuracy “digital map” and computes the projection perspective needed for registration with the driver’s eyes. The system allows the driver of the vehicle to see the 'computed' road boundaries projected on the 'actual' road boundaries, even if they are obscured by snow, rain, or darkness.