NVIDIA and TomTom Develop Mapping System for Self-Driving Cars

AMSTERDAM—GTC Europe—Sept. 28, 2016—NVIDIA and TomTom (TOM2), the Dutch mapping and navigation group, today announced they are partnering to develop artificial intelligence to create a cloud-to-car mapping system for self-driving cars.

The work combines TomTom’s extensive HD map coverage, which already spans more than 120,000 km of highways and freeways, with the NVIDIA DRIVE™ PX 2 computing platform. Together, the solution accelerates support for real-time in-vehicle localisation and mapping for driving on the highway.

NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced the collaboration at the company’s inaugural GTC Europe, a regional version of its annual GPU Technology Conference in Silicon Valley, now in its seventh year.

“Self-driving cars require a highly accurate HD mapping system that can generate an always up-to-date HD map in the cloud,” said Rob Csongor, vice president and general manager of Automotive at NVIDIA. “DRIVE PX 2 for AutoCruise provides TomTom with a real-time, in-vehicle source for HD map updates.”

The NVIDIA DriveWorks software development kit now integrates support for TomTom’s HD mapping environment. The open solution is available for all automakers and tier 1 suppliers developing autonomous vehicles.

“This collaboration is an important step for TomTom,” said Willem Strijbosch, head of Autonomous Driving at TomTom. “Combining our highly accurate HD maps with NVIDIA’s self-driving car platform will enable us to propose new features to automakers faster, and therefore to make autonomous driving a commercial reality sooner.”