Position Estimation Considering Uncertain Classification of Cyclists Based on Partially Observed Movement Characteristics

Prevention of crossing collisions between cyclists and vehicles at nonsignalized intersections on community roads where walls and hedges limit visibility is required in Japan. Because available observation information in real-time is limited on community roads, the use of statistical information that represents the typical movement characteristics of cyclists is effective to compensate for the lack of observation information. From such a background, in our previous study, we proposed a method to construct “location-dependent statistical information” (LDSI) and a method to utilize it as “virtual observation” (VO) and “virtual control input” (VCI) in stochastic position estimation. Here, although LDSI was constructed for multiple clusters of cyclists, the classification method of the cyclists observed in real-time was not considered. In the real world, the limitation of the observation information causes classification uncertainty. Thus, in this study, we propose a position estimation method that utilizes soft classification results and considers classification uncertainty by integrating VO and VCI derived from LDSI of each cluster. To evaluate the proposed method in this study, we conduct a simulation and an experiment in the real world. Through the comparison with conventional methods, we confirm that our proposed method in this study improves the performance of the position estimation. The proposed method will contribute to a cooperative safety system.