Companies that are working on autonomous cars are busy making high definition maps. High definition maps are require for autonomous cars as they should be fully aware of the structure of the path and will eventually serve as a navigation guid to all the in built sensors present in the vehicle.
“There probably have been 50 companies that mapped Las Vegas simply to do a CES drive,” said Chris McNally, an analyst. “It’s such a waste of resources.” The autonomous cars need advanced sensors for its software to think. There are two approaches that are taken. one is creating high definition maps to lead the autonomous cars and other is creating maps piece by piece using sensors in the vehicles that are currently used for automating the driving.
Alphabet’s Google as usual came out as a winner in the digital maps which human are using in majority as experts defeating mapping companies and even Apple. And now they are not willing to let Google win again.
“We’ve built a comprehensive map of the world for people and we are working to expand the utility to our maps to cars,” a Google spokeswoman said. Self driving maps are more tedious and demanding if precision is required while driving. A lot of resources, technology and money is invested in this sector.
“An autonomous vehicle wants that to be as precise, accurate and up-to-date as possible,” said Bryan Salesky, Argo AI LLC. The “off-the-shelf solution doesn’t quite exist.”