Eighteen months after start of construction of its intelligent satellite production and testing center in Taizhou, China, Geely Technology Group has begun mass production of commercial satellites. The first set of low-orbit satellites rolled off the production line, marking a new milestone in Geely’s advancement into the commercial aerospace sector.... Read more →

Woven Planet Holdings, a subsidiary of Toyota Motor, has acquired CARMERA, a US-based spatial AI company that specializes in developing scalable, next-generation mapping solutions for automated mobility, a proposed transaction previously announced in July 2021. (Earlier post.) The CARMERA offering consists of three components: detection APIs that identify map-impacting events;... Read more →

Micromobility services Bird and Ford-owned Spin are the latest to integrate with Google Maps for Mobile (GMM). People using Google Maps for efficient and reliable journey planning are now able to discover Spin e-scooters and e-bikes and Bird scooters when given route options for their journeys. Google Maps users are... Read more →

Woven Planet Holdings, Inc., a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation, has acquired CARMERA, Inc., a US-based spatial AI company, which specializes in bringing next-generation road intelligence to automated mobility at scale. This is the second major deal for Woven Planet in North America, following the April 2021 announcement to acquire... Read more →

NVIDIA will acquire DeepMap, a startup dedicated to building high-definition maps for autonomous vehicles. Maps that are accurate to within a few meters are good enough when providing turn-by-turn directions for humans. AVs, however, require much greater precision. They must operate with centimeter-level precision for accurate localization, the ability of... Read more →

Woven Alpha, Inc., a group company of Woven Planet Holdings, Inc., a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation, Isuzu Motors Limited, and Hino Motors, Ltd. are proceeding with talks to utilize the Automated Mapping Platform (AMP) developed by Woven Alpha. AMP is a connected crowdsourced software platform that supports the creation,... Read more →

China-based Momenta announced strategic cooperation with Toyota to provide automated HD mapping and updates through vision-based technologies. With this joint development, both companies aim to promote the commercialization of Toyota’s Automated Mapping Platform (AMP) in the China market to better serve Chinese customers. Momenta's vision-based (camera-based) HD mapping uses low-cost... Read more →

Ridar Systems and HERE Technologies signed a partnership agreement to begin integrating HERE location technology into Ridar’s cloud-based mobile solution. This collaboration will allow Ridar Systems to identify better the location of two-wheelers in order to provide a more accurate position to drivers. Motorcycles, bicycles, scooters and other forms of... Read more →

Location accuracy is a key requirement for the Connected Vehicle (CV) Pilots as vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technologies are deployed in the field in larger quantities. The New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) CV Pilot team is working hard to ensure that the in-vehicle devices can establish their... Read more →

Ford has awarded TomTom a global multi-year deal to provide Ford’s next-generation SYNC with its real-time traffic service. The all-new 2021 Ford F-150 pickup and the soon to be delivered all-electric Mustang Mach-E SUV are the first Ford vehicles available with the technology. TomTom Traffic provides accurate, real-time traffic information,... Read more →

A collaboration between Neste, HERE Technologies, and PTV Group indicates that traffic-related CO2 emissions can be reduced by choosing the right driving route, especially in urban areas on short trips with private cars. Earlier this spring, Neste and its partners tested the emissions of different route options by installing measuring... Read more →

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have shown that they can significantly improve the accuracy of autonomous vehicles’ detection of objects such as other cars or pedestrians by helping the vehicle also recognize what it doesn’t see. CMU research shows that what a self-driving car doesn’t see (in green) is as... Read more →

A team from the University of Delaware and the University of Denver has created a new global simulation model to predict how urban land will change over the next 100 years under different social and economic conditions. The research team’s projections show that the amount of urban land on Earth... Read more →

Toyota Research Institute - Advanced Development, Inc. (TRI-AD) and Dynamic Map Platform Co., Ltd. (DMP) will partner to build a proof-of-concept (PoC) applying the technologies of both companies starting April 2020. This PoC aims to demonstrate the efficient update of DMP’s high definition (HD) maps by using TRI-AD’s open software... Read more →

Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development, Inc. (TRI-AD), Toyota’s automated driving software development company, has successfully completed a proof-of-concept (PoC) demonstrating high definition (HD) map-building for surface roads with a relative accuracy of less than 50 centimeters—a good level that is required for automated driving—using two techniques. Building map information for automated... Read more →

Resource Watch has introduced a new data-driven Air Quality Dashboard featuring the latest maps and data visualizations on the state of the world’s air. Resource Watch worked with WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities to create this resource for data on air quality and emissions. From the Air Quality Dashboard:... Read more →

A model developed by Researchers at MIT and Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) have developed a model that uses satellite imagery to tag road features in digital maps to help improve GPS navigation. Showing drivers more details about their routes can often help them navigate in unfamiliar locations. Lane counts,... Read more →

New research from McGill University and the University of California, Santa Cruz has found that the local streets of the world’s cities are becoming less connected, a global trend that is driving urban sprawl and discouraging the use of public transportation. The new study, published in an open-access paper in... Read more →

At CES 2020 in Las Vegas, Hyundai; Hexagon’s Positioning Intelligence Division; Valeo; and a major mobile network operator are presenting a new technology capable of pinpointing a vehicle’s exact location while on the road. Using proprietary centimeter-level precision called High-Precision Positioning (HPP), the system can further enhance a vehicle’s advanced... Read more →

Hyundai CRADLE, Hyundai Motor Company’s corporate venturing and open innovation business, is investing in Netradyne, a US-based intelligent technology company specializing in fleet safety management software. The partnership supports further development of Level 3+ Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (L3+ ADAS) and Autonomous Driving (AD) features that may launch over the... Read more →

A team from Northern Arizona University, Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have developed a high-resolution, bottom-up emissions map that includes every building and road in the Los Angeles megacity basin for a total of 176... Read more →

Esri, the global leader in location intelligence, will collaborate with Mobileye, an Intel Company and a leading provider of advanced driver-assistance systems software, to bring the advanced data collection capabilities of Mobileye into Esri’s platform as native services. This collaboration will provide Esri customers with the ability to visualize and... Read more →

Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development, Inc. (TRI-AD), Toyota’s automated driving software development company; Maxar Technologies Inc., a global technology innovator powering the new space economy; and NTT DATA Corporation, a leading IT services provider, will collaborate on a proof-of-concept building automated high-definition (HD) maps for autonomous vehicles using high-resolution satellite imagery.... Read more →

Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development, Inc. (TRI-AD) and CARMERA, Inc. are conducting a joint proof-of-concept project to develop camera-based automation of high definition (HD) maps for urban and surface roads. This is the first step towards realizing TRI-AD’s open software platform concept known as Automated Mapping Platform (AMP) to support the... Read more →

As self-driving cars continue to develop, there will be a staggering amount of data amassed through cars’ navigational technologies. Questions regarding privacy, ownership, cybersecurity and public safety arise, as heavily guarded mapping data is collected and leveraged by companies. The geospatial data can be used to draw new maps identifying... Read more →

Bridgestone Corporation announced that its subsidiary Bridgestone Europe NV/SA, has entered into an agreement with TomTom to acquire TomTom Telematics, its digital fleet solutions business, for a cash consideration of €910 million (US$1.034 billion). €750 million will be distributed to TomTom shareholders by means of a capital repayment, combined with... Read more →

At CES 2019 last week, NVIDIA showcased DRIVE Localization—an open, scalable platform for vehicles to position themselves on high-definition maps with unprecedented robustness and accuracy, using mass-market sensors. It’s vital for a self-driving car to be able to pinpoint its location within centimeters so it can understand its surroundings and... Read more →

The City of Sacramento will partner with Deepen AI, Inc. and Foresight AI, Inc. on a project designed to speed the development and safe deployment of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology for the benefit of the city. The project will use Deepen AI’s 2D and 3D annotation technology, and Foresight AI’s... Read more →

Location technology specialist TomTom (TOM2) will collaborate with DENSO on its software platform for autonomous vehicles. TomTom’s High Definition (HD) Map will work in combination with DENSO in-vehicle sensors such as cameras and radars to power the localization, perception and path planning functions for a complete autonomous driving system. This... Read more →

TomTom (TOM2) announced that, in a single month, it has made 1.5 billion changes to its digital maps which are delivered to TomTom customers on a weekly basis. The milestone is key to the company’s mission to shape the future of mobility in a world that increasingly relies on digital... Read more →

Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC), the corporate venture capital company of the Bosch Group, has completed an investment in US-based startup DeepMap. DeepMap is a software company focused on solving the mapping and localization challenge for autonomous vehicles. (Earlier post.) Maps explicitly designed to be read by machines are... Read more →

 An open ecosystem of best-in-class technologies working seamlessly together will be at the heart of the automated transportation systems of the future. That is the shared vision of Renovo, a mobility software technology company, and mapping and location services company HERE Technologies have entered into a partnership to deploy open... Read more →

Civil Maps, creator of the world’s first edge-based HD mapping and localization platform for self-driving cars (earlier post), has teamed up with Renovo, the software technology company behind AWare (earlier post), to provide highly automated vehicle makers and technology providers with seamless access to Civil Maps’ vehicular cognition stack. Through... Read more →

The BMW Group and Daimler will each make HERE HD Live Map an integral part of their future highly automated and autonomous vehicles (SAE levels 3-5). Both companies, which are some of the co-owners of HERE, already use maps from HERE in their current vehicles. Extremely precise digital maps are... Read more →

At CES, TomTom (TOM2) launched two technologies to support autonomous driving: TomTom AutoStream—a map delivery service that enables vehicles to build a horizon for the road ahead by streaming the latest map data from the TomTom cloud—and TomTom MotionQ, a predictive driving concept to ensure the comfort of passengers in... Read more →

LG Electronics is partnering with HERE Technologies (HERE), a global provider of digital mapping and location services, to offer a next-generation telematics solution for autonomous vehicles. The solution combines LG‘s advanced telematics technology with high-precision map data and location services powered by the HERE Open Location Platform. Through their planned... Read more →

Audi is exhibiting an innovative pre-development project to support autonomous driving at the NIPS 2017 conference in Long Beach, California, this week. A project team from the Audi subsidiary Audi Electronics Venture (AEV) developed a mono camera that uses artificial intelligence to generate an extremely precise 3D model of the... Read more →

HERE Technologies and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO) intend to link their advanced location technologies for autonomous vehicles into a powerful integrated service offering for automakers. According to their preliminary agreement, the companies aim to offer services to support cars with ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems) on the road today right... Read more →

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has been conducting expressway-based field testing of its xAUTO vehicle and related autonomous-driving technologies for self-sensing and network-based driving since May 2016. The xAUTO will be exhibited during 45th Tokyo Motor Show 2017 later this month. Mitsubishi Electric named its autonomous driving technologies “Diamond Safety.” Mitsubishi Electric’s... Read more →

Ushr Inc., a developer of high-definition (HD) mapping technology and software for autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles, has secured $10 million in Series A funding, commensurate with its spin-off from GeoDigital, Inc. Forté Ventures led the investment round with participation from EnerTech Capital, Emerald Technology Ventures, and GM Ventures. Drawing on... Read more →

At the end of 2015, Audi AG, the BMW Group and Daimler AG purchased HERE Technologies, a leading software company for high-resolution digital navigation maps and location-based services, from Nokia. (Earlier post.) HERE is designed as an open platform; since its takeover by the automaker consortium, the company has steadily... Read more →

HERE Technologies has launched the new generation of its HERE Real-Time Traffic service—the first global service on the market that integrates live vehicle sensor data from Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz vehicles with traffic probe information, resulting in significantly higher accuracy and more precise information about traffic conditions. HERE Real-Time Traffic,... Read more →

Bosch and the Dutch map and traffic information provider TomTom have developed a radar localization layer for high-resolution maps for automated driving—a first. Up to now, video data has been used for this purpose. Bosch’s “radar road signature” is made up of billions of individual reflection points. These are formed... Read more →

Engineering researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and colleagues have demonstrated a measurement approach to for urban air pollution mapping at 4–5 orders of magnitude greater spatial precision than possible with current central-site ambient monitoring. The team equipped two Google Street View vehicles with the fast-response Aclima Ei... Read more →

The 2018 Cadillac CT6 will feature Super Cruise (earlier post) autonomous driving technology for the highway. Unlike other driver assistance systems, Super Cruise utilizes two advanced technology systems—a driver attention system and precision LiDAR map data—to ensure safe and confident vehicle operation. These systems are added to the network of... Read more →

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has developed two new technologies to support the creation and maintenance of high-precision 3D maps required for autonomous driving (earlier post): AI-based automated mapping; and the extraction of transitions in mapping landscapes. The technologies are based on the company’s own Mobile Mapping System (MMS) (earlier post) for... Read more →

Qualcomm Technologies is working with TomTom on using the Qualcomm Drive Data Platform for high-definition (HD) map crowdsourcing, to accelerate the future of autonomous driving. Qualcomm Drive Data Platform intelligently collects and analyzes data from different vehicle sensors, supporting smarter vehicles to determine their location, monitor and learn driving patterns,... Read more →

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... Read more →

Qualcomm is introducing the Qualcomm Drive Data Platform to collect and analyze intelligently information from a vehicle’s sensors. Cars will be able to determine their location up to lane-level accuracy, to monitor and to learn driving patterns, to perceive their surroundings, and to share this reliable and accurate data with... Read more →

Intel will purchase a 15% ownership stake in HERE, a global provider of high-definition digital maps and location-based services, from HERE’s current indirect shareholders: Audi AG, BMW AG and Daimler AG. The three automakers acquired HERE from Nokia in 2015 (earlier post) with the goal of securing the long-term availability... Read more →