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The development of road telematics requires the management of ever-growing databases related to traffic fluidity, live consignment monitoring and vehicle fleet tracking, as to driver assistance. Such an effort relies on the tight synergy between navigation technology, telecommunication and geographic information, to enhance the maintenance and exploitation of the road network and, above all, to strengthen security. Consequently, an accurate knowledge of the road environment and topology is mandatory to implement applications of transport telematics. The early nineties experienced major advances in GPS/INS coupling and the market launch of affordable digital cameras. Thus, a considerable portion of road information is captured by vehicles equipped with such sensors, a technique known as "mobile mapping". The advantage of the kinematic collection of data – such as the pavement geometry, its surfacing quality and the positioning of road objects – lies in the much faster completion of the survey, hence an excellent cost effectiveness. However, the complexity of data georeferencing and the fusion of the results with video sequences require numerous hours of repetitive labor. Moreover, only the process completion reveals the correct recording of position measurements. Any further survey can only be decided a few days later. We propose to introduce the concept of "real time" in the field of mobile mapping. The determinist exploitation of the data captured during a kinematic survey aims at restricting human intervention in the sophisticated georeferencing process, while authorizing the dissemination of this technique outside well-informed communities. The other challenge of this thesis that lies in the automatic fusion of localization data with images, under tight time constraints. In these conditions, what are the tools and algorithms robust enough to ensure the quality control of the georeferencing of road objects? We intend to provide these concerns a pertinent answer, while demonstrating the validity of the concept via the automatic acquisition and interpretation of the road geometry.
Jan Skaloud, Gabriel François Laupré
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