Vehicle localization in open-pit mining using gps and monocular camera

A method for continuous vehicle localization in an open pit mining environment in which vehicles carrying GPS receivers operate in a region of intermittent or incomplete GPS coverage, comprising:

• generating digital images with a field of view overlooking the mine region from a fixed location as vehicles move about the mine;
• processing the digital images by analysing the image data to identify the presence and location of a vehicle in an image;
• and
• fusing the identified image location of the vehicle with a measurement from the corresponding vehicle GPS receiver to provide continuous vehicle localization data.

A system for localization of vehicles in an open pit mining environment having intermittent or incomplete GPS coverage, comprising:

• GPS receivers associated with the vehicles and providing GPS measurements when available;
• a camera overlooking the mine region from a known location for generating a sequence of images in a field of view with predetermined calibration in a fixed coordinate system;
• a vehicle recognition processor for analysing individual images from the camera to identify and locate within an image a vehicle in the mine region;
• a vehicle tracking processor for analysing a sequence of images from the camera to track the identified vehicle location in the sequence of images;
• and
• a data fusion processor coupled to receive GPS measurements, when available, from the vehicle GPS receivers, to fuse the received GPS measurement and corresponding vehicle image location, and to output a vehicle localization output.