Reading the Roads: A New Technique for Vehicle Location

This paper proposes a new approach for vehicle location for Intelligent Transportation Systems, the Visual Protocol System (VPS). VPS has three key system components a protocol for the presentation and interpretation of information within a visual scene, standards for roadway labels, and an in-vehicle system composed of hardware and software to implement the visual protocol and feed information to an in-vehicle navigation system. This concept has an advantage of low cost when compared with active roadside beacons, and a very great advantage of multiple use potential and expandability when compared with single-use GPS technology.