Chapter 11: Mapping Our Environments
There are a few fundamental things that your self-driving car needs to navigate the world.
First of all, you need to have a map of your environment. This map is very similar to the map you use on your phone for getting to your favorite restaurant.
Secondly, you need a way to localize your position on that map in the real world. On your phone, this is the blue dot localized by the GPS.
In this chapter, you will learn about various ways for your self-driving car to map and localize through its environment, so it knows where it is in the world. You can imagine why this is important since the entire reason for making a self-driving car is to go places!
You will learn the following topics to help you build a self-driving car worthy of being called Magellan:
- Why you need maps and localization
- Types of mapping and localization
- Open source mapping tools
- SLAM with an Ouster lidar and Google Cartographer
