Caterpillar Inc.

Jay H West

Lonnie J Devier

William L Whittaker

Norman K Lay

Sanjiv J Singh

Richard G Clow

Gary K Shaffer

Adam J Gudat

Craig L Koehrsen

Christos T Kyrtsos

Carl A Kemner

Karl W Kleimenhagen

Joel L Peterson

Darrell E Stafford

Walter J Bradbury

Dana A Christensen

Larry E Schmidt

Louis J Weinbeck

Dong Hun Shin

Prithvi N Rao

Wenfan Shi

James W Sennott

Baoxin Wu

A system (400) for positioning and navigating an autonomous vehicle (310) allows the vehicle (310) to travel between locations. Position information (432) is derived from global positioning system satellites (200, 202, 204, and 206) or other sources (624) when the satellites (200, 202, 204, and 206) are not in the view of the vehicle (310). Navigation of the vehicle (310) is obtained using the position information (432), route information (414), obstacle detection and avoidance data (416), and on board vehicle data (908 and 910).

System and a method for enabling a vehicle to track a preset path

A system and method detects obstacles in a road being traveled by a vehicle. Edge points of the road are calculated from known road data. A series of scan lines are made of the road ahead of the vehicle to obtain an image plane of the road ahead of the vehicle. The calculated edge points are projected into the image plane to determine the left and right edge points of each scan line in the image plane. Each scan line is processed to locate any discontinuities between the left and right edge points, where the discontinuities correspond to objects in the road.

System and method for detecting obstacles in a road

An apparatus and method for navigating a vehicle along a predetermined route use route data and path data to define the predetermined route. The route data represents one or more contiguous path segments between adjacent nodes along the predetermined route. The path data includes postures of the vehicle along each of the path segments. The postures define the desired position, heading, curvature and speed of vehicle at various locations along the path segments. The apparatus and method use the posture information to generate and track a path thereby allowing the vehicle to navigate along the predetermined route.

Apparatus and method for autonomous vehicle navigation using path data

System and method for detecting obstacles in the path of a vehicle

Integrated vehicle positioning and navigation system, apparatus and

Multi-tasked navigation system and method for an autonomous land based

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Pittsburgh, PA, United States of America

Jay H West