An ESA NAVISP project has examined how positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) technologies will need to evolve to support increasingly automated road vehicles and other advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).
The project, ‘ADAS technology and PNT’, was led by Acitoflux GmbH and examined the relationship between PNT capabilities and emerging automated-driving applications across the European and Canadian technology landscape. Rather than focusing on positioning accuracy alone, the study assessed the requirements for PNT that can remain continuously usable, trustworthy and verifiable across the operational design domain (ODD) of an automated system.
The study combined technology scouting, industry research, expert input and use-case analysis. Acitoflux screened and long-listed 331 companies across the PNT and ADAS/AD ecosystem, covering vehicle manufacturers, Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers, GNSS and correction services, localization and positioning, mapping, timing and V2X (vehicle-to-everything).
A central element was a gap analysis based on ten PNT dimensions, covering technical performance, signal quality and resilience, and economic deployment and viability. Forty-nine use cases were re-evaluated, with twenty-four non-TRL9 use cases taken forward for detailed analysis.
From accuracy to trust
At a recent ESA-hosted event, Lennart Säger, Mika Mänz and Marc Halft of Acitoflux presented the final results of the project. Their analysis found that accuracy and precision are not the principal PNT bottlenecks for emerging ADAS/AD applications. Instead, availability, robustness and verification were identified as the main gaps.
Automated systems must be able to determine not simply where they are, but how much confidence can be placed in that position under changing conditions such as urban canyons, tunnels, dense canopy, construction sites and RF-hostile environments.
The study identified several technology trends. Multi-constellation, multi-frequency GNSS is becoming the baseline, while tightly coupled GNSS/INS with motion constraints is emerging as a standard building block for autonomy-oriented localization. RTK is considered operationally mature, while PPP and PPP-RTK are identified as growth areas. Alternative localization technologies, including camera- and LiDAR-based methods, SLAM and high-grade inertial and wheel-odometry systems, are increasingly viewed as complementary rather than replacements for GNSS.
The team used these findings to identify potential future research activities. These include fleet-sourced GNSS risk intelligence, under-glass PNT and sensor integration for automated vehicles, and national or cross-border PNT resilience maps and interference monitoring.
The next challenge for automotive PNT, it would seem, is likely to be less about achieving another increment in nominal accuracy than about delivering trusted, validated and scalable positioning performance that an automated vehicle can use to make operational decisions
