Vehicular position specification apparatus and vehicular position specification method

A computer-implemented vehicular position specification method performed by at least one processor, comprising:

• acquiring a recognition result of a boundary line, the boundary line being (i) a lane division line along a traffic lane or (ii) the lane division line and a road edge that is a boundary between a road and an outside of the road, the lane division line and the road edge being recognized from a detection result by a peripheral monitoring sensor that monitors a periphery of a vehicle;
• acquiring a recognition result of a landmark that is different from the boundary line, the recognition result being recognized from the detection result by the peripheral monitoring sensor;
• acquiring a map data of a map including a position of the boundary line and a position of the landmark;
• estimating a lateral position of the vehicle on a traveling road on the map by collating a relative position of the boundary line with respect to the vehicle indicated by the recognition result of the boundary line acquired with the position of the boundary line included in the map data;
• and
• specifying a detailed position of the vehicle by
• not adopting the lateral position of the vehicle using the lateral position estimated using the lane division line of the boundary line in response to a lateral deviation between (i) a relative position of the landmark with respect to the vehicle indicated by the acquired recognition result of the landmark and (ii) the position of the landmark included in the map data being equal to or greater than a first threshold value, and
• adopting the lateral position of the vehicle using the lateral position estimated using the lane division line of the boundary line in response to the lateral deviation being less than the first threshold value,
• wherein
• the detailed position of the vehicle is output to a driving support apparatus, and
• the driving support apparatus executes a driving support function by using the detailed position of the vehicle.

A vehicular position specification apparatus used in a vehicle, comprising:

• at least one memory;
• and
• at least one processor communicably coupled with the at least one memory,
• wherein the at least one processor is configured to:
• acquire a recognition result of a boundary line, the boundary line being (i) a lane division line along a traffic lane or (ii) the lane division line and a road edge that is a boundary between a road and an outside of the road, the recognition result of each of the lane division line and road edge being recognized from a detection result by a peripheral monitoring sensor that monitors a periphery of the vehicle;
• acquire a recognition result of a landmark that is different from the boundary line, the recognition result being recognized from the detection result by the peripheral monitoring sensor;
• acquire a map data of a map including a position of the boundary line and a position of the landmark;
• estimate, on the map, a lateral position of the vehicle on a traveling road by collating a relative position of the boundary line with respect to the vehicle indicated by the recognition result of the boundary line with the position of the boundary line included in the map data;
• specify a detailed position of the vehicle by
• not adopting the lateral position of the vehicle using the lateral position estimated using the lane division line of the boundary line in response to a lateral deviation between (i) the position of the landmark indicated by the recognition result of the landmark and (ii) the position of the landmark included in the map data being equal to or greater than a first threshold value, and
• adopting the lateral position of the vehicle using the lateral position estimated using the lane division line of the boundary line in response to the lateral deviation being less than the first threshold value,
• wherein
• the detailed position of the vehicle is output to a driving support apparatus, and
• the driving support apparatus executes a driving support function by using the detailed position of the vehicle.