Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development (TRI-AD) and CARMERA are collaborating to deliver high-definition maps of urban and surface roads for automated vehicles using camera data.
While TRI-AD is working towards designing the world safest automated driving car and software, CARMERA provides large-scale “living” HD maps for autonomous vehicles, and visual telematic services for professional fleets to improve safety and productivity of high-coverage vehicles on the road today. CARMERA also works with leading automotive OEMs, mobility-as-a-service companies, and cities to help ensure that autonomous mobility works for everyone.
Mandali Khalesi, Vice President Automated Driving at TRI-AD, said: “Currently automated driving map development relies on highly expensive specialized mapping vehicles deployed in limited numbers, and a lengthy manual process for reliable HD map creation. We’re excited to partner with CARMERA to automate HD map generation and help enable automated driving mobility for all.”
This collaboration will build on TRI-AD’s open software platform concept, Automated Mapping Platform (AMP), which will support the scalability of highly automated driving by combining data collected from vehicles of participating companies to generate HD maps. The collaboration will also attempt to improve the current coverage of highway HD maps, which represents less than 1% of the worldwide road network, while making maps for urban areas and local roads as well.
To accomplish this task, the companies will place cameras, using Toyota Safety Sense (TTS) components, and regular “dashcam” drive recorders in Toyota test vehicles to collect images and data of downtown Tokyo throughout several months. This information will then be processed on CARMERA’s real-time platform to automatically generate HD map data.
“CARMERA was founded to deploy next-generation street intelligence at low cost, high speed, and automotive-grade reliability, to democratize autonomous mobility at a global scale. We’re excited to collaborate with TRI-AD in putting the flexibility and modularity of our platform to work to build HD maps, beginning with one of the largest and most dynamic urban environments in the world,” said Ro Gupta, CEO at CARMERA.
By combining the maps produced in this project with digital maps available right now and data acquired from vehicles around the world, automated driving will be possible, and the accompanying reliable road information for those automated vehicles will allow for a better mobility experience everywhere.
