Camera based localization for autonomous vehicles

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing computer program instructions, the computer program instructions when executed by a computer processor causes the processor to:

• receive from an imaging system mounted on an autonomous vehicle, an image frame, the image frame depicting a portion of a local area surrounding the vehicle;
• receive an initial pose of the autonomous vehicle that is an estimate of an actual pose of the autonomous vehicle;
• load a plurality of edgels from map data of a High Definition (HD) map of the local area based upon the initial pose;
• analyze the image frame to identify a plurality of edge pixels within the image frame;
• for each respective edgel of a subset of the plurality of edgels:
• project the respective edgel onto the image frame, based upon the initial pose;
• and
• determine a correspondence between the projected edgel and an edge pixel of the plurality of edge pixels, based upon a distance between the projected edgel and the edge pixel;
• determine, based upon the determined correspondences, a transformation that if applied to the subset of edgels reduces an aggregate distance between the subset of edgels and their corresponding edge pixels;
• apply the determined transformation to the initial pose to determine an updated pose of the autonomous vehicle with respect to the actual pose;
• and
• provide signals to the vehicle to navigate the autonomous vehicle based on the updated pose of the autonomous vehicle.