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Vehicle localization and position determination is a major factor for the operation of Autonomous Vehicle. Errors or unavailability of resources to determine this, poses a serious threat not only to the vehicle but also the environment around it. Global Positioning System (GPS) is one of the most common resources to determine position about the reference geographic coordinate system. But this resource has several drawbacks of its own viz. clock errors, multi-path errors and also uncertainty of good signal strength due to weather conditions or physical barriers. Also an additional drawback of a low-update rate makes it unreliable for the Autonomous Localization algorithm to operate on this. Thus a system is required which has no external environment dependencies to determine the position of the vehicle. Inertial Measurement Unit is a coupled system comprising of a 3-axis accelerometer and 3-axis gyroscope which records body force accelerations and the yaw rate.

Autonomous driving is looked upon as solution for future of automotive vehicles. The technology has tremendous possibilities to improve safety, fuel economy, comfort, cost of ownership etc. The project to develop an autonomous controller from scratch was undertaken, with objective to drive under selected test scenarios. The car, modified to drive using this autonomous controller, is able to handle these scenarios. The key scenarios include ability to successfully drive on tracks with well-marked lanes, Follow the route as per selected trip plan file, recognize and follow all traffic road signs, traffic signals en-route, identify other vehicles on the road or pedestrians in the lane and take the appropriate action. The development was carried out using frugal engineering approach. As the Autonomous Vehicle technology is still under development, the standard proven published approaches are not available.