High def mapping could be essential for advanced ADAS

TomTom may be thought of by the public at large as a navigation service, but in fact, the mapping giant is playing an important role in self-driving vehicle development. High definition (HD) maps, which are rich in detail, could give high-level autonomy vehicles the information they need to make the decisions which, whilst obvious to human drivers, computers still struggle to process.

Willem Strijbosch, TomTom’s Head of Autonomous Driving, believes like most that ADAS represents a stepping stone to autonomy, and that actually, HD maps enable features across all levels of autonomy, from Level 0 to Level 5, and moving forward, companies like TomTom will become more widely associated with self-driving development.