Abstract
Lane markings are the primary guidance system for both human drivers and autonomous vehicles. Yet painted markings fade, disappear under snow, and become invisible in heavy rain or glare — precisely when accurate guidance matters most. METRO addresses this with magnetic road markings: thin strips of permanent magnets embedded in road surfaces that encode lane information as magnetic patterns.
Vehicles equipped with commodity magnetometers can reliably read METRO markings regardless of weather, lighting, or surface conditions. Tested on real-world roads, METRO enables accurate lane detection and vehicle positioning in conditions that blind every camera-based system.
Key Insights
- Magnetic markings are invisible to cameras but reliably detectable by low-cost magnetometers.
- Works in snow, rain, darkness, and sun glare — conditions that defeat optical lane detection.
- Passive infrastructure — no power required at the road surface.
- Compatible with commodity in-vehicle magnetometers already used for navigation.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{wang2023metro,
title = {METRO: Magnetic Road Markings for All-weather, Smart Roads},
author = {Wang, Jike and Wang, Shanmu and Iravantchi, Yasha and Wang, Mingke and Sample, Alanson and Shin, Kang G. and Wang, Xinbing and Zhou, Chenghu and Chen, Dongyao},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 21st ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys)},
year = {2023},
publisher = {ACM}
}