System for Object Georeferencing, Speed, and Heading Detection Using LiDAR-INS/GNSS Mounted on a Mobile Vehicle

Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and Inertial Navigation System (INS)/Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) are two sensors that play a vital role in Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). LiDAR gives a 3D vision of the surroundings, and INS/GNSS helps to localize the vehicle in the global frame of reference. The LiDAR data consists of 3D points in the local frame. The local frame can be transformed into the global frame using georeferencing, leading to the latitude and longitude of the objects around the vehicle. The prerequisite for georeferencing is the alignment of the local LiDAR frame with the local East-North-Up (ENU) frame. This paper proposes a pipeline and system that finds the latitude, longitude, speed, and heading of moving objects around a mobile vehicle in real time. In this pipeline, an azimuth correction is applied to raw LiDAR data so that it is always in the local ENU frame, leading to accurate georeferencing. With the help of georeferencing, the object's speed and heading were also determined. With the proposed system, georeferencing was achieved with a mean error of less than 2m, and speed and heading with an average absolute error of 0.336 m/s and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.738^{0}$</tex-math></inline-formula>, respectively, at 52 frames per second.