AI technology for HD mapping from cloud to car

With their sights set on a driverless future, HERE and NVIDIA today extended their collaboration to develop HERE HD Live Map into the industry-leading real-time, high-definition mapping solution for autonomous vehicles.

The broad collaboration for the solution, which would span the vehicle and the cloud, includes three planned initiatives:

• HERE is accelerating HERE HD Live Map using NVIDIA MapWorks AI technology.
• NVIDIA is developing localization technology based on HERE HD Live Map as part of NVIDIA DriveWorks software - enabling automakers using DRIVE PX 2 in the car to integrate localization capability.
• HERE and NVIDIA intend to collaborate on a HERE HD Live Map-based in-vehicle solution to perceive changes in the environment and update the map in the cloud accordingly.

"The physical world is changing all the time and self-driving cars need to be aware of that change so they can take better driving decisions," said Edzard Overbeek, CEO, HERE. "HERE HD Live Map already addresses that need and by working with NVIDIA we can ensure that automakers deploying the NVIDIA DRIVE platform can easily enable HERE HD Live Map for self-driving cars."

"HD maps are essential for self-driving cars," said Jen-Hsun Huang, founder and chief executive officer, NVIDIA. "HERE's adoption of our deep learning technology for their cloud-to-car mapping system will accelerate automakers' ability to deploy self-driving vehicles."

HERE HD Live Map, a cloud service supporting all levels of vehicle automation, is already commercially available for North America and Western Europe. Through multiple modes of sensor ingestion and aggregation, it can update itself, with rich data layers assisting the vehicle in positioning, localization and strategy planning.

At the HERE booth at CES, NVIDIA and HERE are showcasing localization utilizing the HERE HD Live Map on the NVIDIA DRIVE PX 2 AI computer. It uses deep learning to precisely locate the vehicle's position with centimeter accuracy, as well as to detect how the environment around the car may differ from the current map. Road tests are already taking place as part of this collaboration.