# Automated Ground Truth Estimation For Automotive Radar Tracking Applications With Portable GNSS And IMU Devices

## TL;DR

This paper introduces an automated method for generating ground truth trajectories for automotive radar tracking by using portable GNSS and IMU devices, improving accuracy over traditional approaches.

## Contribution

It presents a novel system combining GNSS and IMU data to accurately associate radar data with vulnerable road user tracks and generate precise occupancy maps.

## Key findings

- System performs well under various GNSS conditions
- Carrying the reference system improves radar measurement accuracy
- Enables precise real-world radar data distribution for VRUs

## Abstract

Baseline generation for tracking applications is a difficult task when working with real world radar data. Data sparsity usually only allows an indirect way of estimating the original tracks as most objects' centers are not represented in the data. This article proposes an automated way of acquiring reference trajectories by using a highly accurate hand-held global navigation satellite system (GNSS). An embedded inertial measurement unit (IMU) is used for estimating orientation and motion behavior. This article contains two major contributions. A method for associating radar data to vulnerable road user (VRU) tracks is described. It is evaluated how accurate the system performs under different GNSS reception conditions and how carrying a reference system alters radar measurements. Second, the system is used to track pedestrians and cyclists over many measurement cycles in order to generate object centered occupancy grid maps. The reference system allows to much more precisely generate real world radar data distributions of VRUs than compared to conventional methods. Hereby, an important step towards radar-based VRU tracking is accomplished.