Toyota And Its Partner Use Safety Cameras To Make HD Maps For Autonomous Cars

Dhir Acharya - Mar 01, 2019

Safety cameras can provide critical data to make HD maps instead of developing complex mapping vehicles expected to travel and map the whole world.

In autonomous cars, high-definition mapping is among the most important parts, and the auto industry is trying to solve this equation. However, if you are expecting some kind of map made for every road across the globe, you should know that’s a whole lot of work to do for automakers. Fortunately, Toyota in collaboration with Carmera may have come up with a solution.

On Thursday, HD mapping company Carmera and Toyota Research Institute announced that they are working on a proof of concept for TRI’s Automated Mapping Platform, which collects data from participating cars then turns it into high-definition maps which they can use to improve autonomous cars navigate.

You may be asking: what data are you talking about? Here it goes, Toyota Research Institute and Carmera have a solution to ease mapping, the drivers themselves. Almost current car safety systems include at least one tiny camera attached to the vehicle’s front to view the traffic ahead. The pair believe this can provide critical data for creating HD maps rather than developing and building complex mapping vehicles expected to travel and map the whole world.

In order to test the feasibility of this concept, Toyota’s Institute and Carmera will install test cars with the same safety cameras used in the Safety Sense suite of Toyota for aiding active and passive drivers. After gathering the images from the cameras, TRI will give them to Carmera to turn them, along with other sources of data, into high-definition map data.

Toyota autonomous car

The first location to test this concept is Tokyo. In a press release, TRI notes that up to now, HD mapping has only covered less than 1% of global roads, with most are highways. Since autonomous vehicles will make up a large part of the transportation systems in the near future, the pair have high hopes that they can make the mapping process even faster.

However, there’s still a lot to do before Toyota and Carmera can bring this concept to practical implementation.