Patent attributes
A georeferenced trajectory estimation system for vehicles receives trajectory data generated by a plurality of vehicle sensors and fixed reference points of previously generated maps and aligns geometry data for a geographic region and trajectory data from the received data from different map builds. The trajectory data from respective map builds is aligned with fixed reference points of previously generated maps to generate a map of the geographic region. The received map data may include submap or spatially indexed data that is used to provide estimates of where a vehicle in an unmapped area is located by generating a series of pose estimates relating back to a fixed reference point in a previously mapped area. The resulting map expands the coverage of the existing map such that old and new map data is in a common consistent reference frame whereby the map may be built incrementally while ensuring global consistency.