Real-Time Performance-Focused Localization Techniques for Autonomous Vehicle: A Review

Real-time, accurate, and robust localisation is critical for autonomous vehicles (AVs) to achieve safe, efficient driving, whilst real-time performance is essential for AVs to achieve their current position in time for decision making. To date, no review paper has quantitatively compared the real-time performance between different localisation techniques based on various hardware platforms and programming languages and analysed the relations among localisation methodologies, real-time performance and accuracy. Therefore, this paper discusses the state-of-the-art localisation techniques and analyses their overall performance in AV application. For further analysis, this paper firstly proposes a localisation algorithm operations capability (LAOC)-based equivalent comparison method to compare the relative computational complexity of different localisation techniques; then, it comprehensively discusses the relations among methodologies, computational complexity, and accuracy. Analysis results show that the computational complexity of localisation approaches differs by a maximum of about 10 ⁷ times, whilst accuracy varies by about 100 times. Vision- and data fusion-based localisation techniques have about 2–5 times potential for improving accuracy compared with lidar-based localisation. Lidar- and vision-based localisation can reduce computational complexity by improving image registration method efficiency. Data fusion-based localisation can achieve better real-time performance compared with lidar- and vision-based localisation because each standalone sensor does not need to develop a complex algorithm to achieve its best localisation potential. Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology can improve positioning robustness. Finally, the potential solutions and future orientations of AVs’ localisation based on the quantitative comparison results are discussed.