Volkswagen and Mobileye partner on autonomous driving; REM in VWs in 2018
14 February 2017
Volkswagen and Mobileye will implement a new navigation standard for autonomous driving starting in 2018. Future Volkswagen models will use the camera-based map and localization technology Road Experience Management (REM) from Mobileye. (Earlier post.)
REM uses crowd-sourcing (data from many cars – the swarm) to generate real-time data for precise localization and acquisition of high-definition track data. Volkswagen cars, which are equipped with front cameras, will acquire lane markings and road information via optical sensor systems from Mobileye; this information flows in compressed format into a cloud. This fleet data is used for continuous improvement of high-definition navigation maps with highly precise localization capability.
These, in turn, serve as a foundation for autonomous driving and advanced development of many assistance systems.
The future of autonomous driving depends on the ability to create and maintain precise high-definition maps and scale them at minimal cost. The Volkswagen agreement is a turning point. It not only utilizes crowd-sourcing technology to automatically generate high-definition maps and scale them cost-effectively. A much more important aspect is that the agreement provides a framework for industry-wide cooperation between automobile manufacturers to jointly produce the map contents that are needed for autonomous driving.
—Professor Amnon Shashua, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Mobileye
The agreement merges the data of different automobile manufacturers worldwide to create a single high-definition world map, creating a de facto industry-wide standard, Volkswagen said.
Every day millions of Volkswagen vehicles drive on our streets. Many of them are equipped with sensors to monitor the surroundings. We can now utilize this swarm to obtain various environmental data in anonymized related to traffic flow, road conditions and available parking places, and we can make these highly up-to-date data available in higher-level systems. More services are planned which will be able to utilise these data and make car driving and mobility easier with greater convenience and comfort overall. Not only our Volkswagen customers will benefit from this collaborative work.
—Dr Frank Welsch, Member of the Board of Management Volkswagen Brand responsible for Development
The Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand is present in more than 150 markets throughout the world and produces vehicles at more than 50 locations in 14 countries. In 2016, Volkswagen produced about 5.99 million vehicles including bestselling models such as the Golf, Tiguan, Jetta or Passat.
Mobileye N.V. is a global leader in the development of computer vision and machine learning, data analysis, localization and mapping for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and autonomous driving.
The big boys will put this technology into their ICE vehicles as well as electric.
That is where the real scale will come from for mapping etc, not in simply putting it into electric cars, which are only a small percentage of the total fleet.
Posted by: Davemart | 14 February 2017 at 03:45 AM
LOL 99.9% of all roads have at least 100 cars passing every 24 hour. So if just 1 in a 1000 car is equipped with road mapping tech like all Tesla’s cars since 2013 you will have a new updated map every 10 day on 99.9% of all roads. Tesla has already mapped the world where it sells its cars hundreds of times.
Furthermore, most people drive along the same roads all the time. If no other car has driven on your road before and it is the first time you drive your Tesla on that road the autopilot will not engage. However, the next time you drive on that road the autopilot can engage because now it has a map to help navigate that road like if no line markers are visible. My point is that even if you were the only car in the world with crowd mapping tech you only need to drive through once to make a map. Scale matters almost not at all. Crowd sourcing of maps will be very useful even without any scale.
Posted by: Account Deleted | 14 February 2017 at 07:56 AM
"..this swarm.."
Use all the sensors communicating to a central database, then you have quite a bit of information to use.
Posted by: SJC | 15 February 2017 at 07:48 AM