Oxbotica, a UK-based company that designs and develops autonomous vehicle software, has introduced its camera-based localisation software for autonomous vehicles, Dub4.

The software company claims that Dub4 addresses some of the key challenges of autonomy, and addresses questions such as where the vehicle is at any point in time.

Currently, the software has been installed as the primary localiser on Oxbotica’s driverless car prototype, Geni, and on the GATEway pods in Greenwich, London, where the software uses a single stereo camera mounted onto the car for determining precise position and orientation in the world.

"Dub4 software is the first localisation system to rely purely on camera technology."

With the help of the localisation information, the software creates and navigates using vision based maps without any reliance on GPS or expensive laser-based techniques.

Oxbotica chief executive officer Graeme Smith said: “We’re excited to be working on deployment of our class-leading Dub4 software solution, as part of our mission to achieve Level 4 autonomy by 2020.

“What we’ve done with Dub4 has never been done before and it represents a seismic shift for the self-driving vehicle industry, enabling a move away from GPS and 3D laser-based approaches.

"We’re paving the way for more affordable and accurate solutions in the industry.”

The company further added that its Dub4 software is the first localisation system to rely purely on camera technology.

The software, which has been developed by Oxbotica and the researchers at Oxford University’s Oxford Robotics Institute, has been tested on thousands of kilometers of data across different cities, warehouses and off-road environments.

Operating as a standalone application on commodity PC hardware, Dub4 can be integrated onto any platform equipped with cameras and used to provide low-cost localisation and navigation to applications ranging from warehousing to self-driving vehicles.