Progressing semi- and fully-autonomous driving will require additional advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and sensors so that the car can position itself on the road correctly. According to Frans de Rooij, Marketing Director, Automotive at TomTom, these sensors are important, but above everything the car needs to be able to see past them. “We want to enable the car to plan ahead,” he remarked in a recent Automotive World webinar.
Foresight
TomTom has been collecting data from its community of users long before devices were connected. Users could upload changes and GPS traces from their connected portable devices to their home computer to monitor their trips. GPS traces are gathered independently of the user (if authorised), who does not need to take any action to submit such information. With the widespread connection of devices, TomTom is looking to utilize a range of sources to plot real-time changes to public roads and provide a helping hand to ADAS.
TomTom’s Active Community Input software allows a user to report changes in a map – be it roadwork, new speed cameras or varying speed limitations – which can be done while driving, or post-journey. “We believe in the power of the community,” said de Rooij. “Obviously, all these inputs require active users, and typically this is a small fraction of the user base. As such, there is also the passive community input.” Once users have agreed to do so, they can also share their GPS traces in an anonymous way with TomTom servers. This allows TomTom users to create a digital road map that shows road use along a particular stretch of road or city.
All in a day’s work
“By midday, we will already have built up a detailed picture of the road network. After a full day, we will have covered the vast majority of roads around the world,” de Rooij said, but admitted there is only so much the consumer can do to help. “These traces give us a good insight into where the roads are, but the accuracy of these traces is limited,” he said. “We combine these traces with professional map-making methods.” A fleet of mobile mapping vans with high-end mapping sensors are deployed to gather detailed data, which is layered over the existing consumer sourced data map.
Put simply, data from a range of sources – be it from users that have opted in to provide information about changes to the road on which they are currently driving, to those that simply provide GPS coordinates independently – is aggregated with data from tech-intensive mapping vehicles deployed on public roads by TomTom.
“We feed this data into our map-making platform, where we do quality validation, and then publish these changes to the vehicle as incremental map updates,” explained de Rooij. “This means there is no need to download a full map update every time a change is made, as our platform releases individual changes to the vehicle as map tiles.”
Trouble ahead? No problem.
Bosch has partnered with TomTom to develop high-definition digital maps for autonomous driving, where continuous updates and detailed geometry is vital. Through this partnership, information on every road lane – including markings, centrelines and road boundaries – will be integrated into map updates in future to work in tandem with Bosch’s ADAS technology in the car.
Dirk Hoheisel, Member of the Board of Management, Mobility Solutions at Bosch, told Automotive World: “Up-to-date information has to be made available to the car… 20% of road signs in Germany are changed within a year on the map, and this is information that has to be exchanged through dynamic mapping.”
Also speaking in the webinar was Barry Tremeer, Senior Product Line Manager, Traffic at TomTom, who pointed out that 90% of road accidents are caused by human error, “so any extra information we can provide to the driver about the road ahead can surely reduce this.” He continued: “Nearly 25% of crashes in the US are recorded to be weather related – ie. wet roads during rainfall. If we can provide information to the driver about a storm ahead, we can also surely reduce this figure.”
What’s more, 16% of all fatal road accidents are blamed on driver distraction, and 62% of these crashes come as a result of simply being “lost in thought” as drivers run into the back of another vehicle stuck in traffic. “This is where vehicle sensors and warning of traffic jams ahead is hugely important,” noted Tremeer. “If we reveal the road ahead beyond the car’s sensors, we can improve safety for all,” he concluded.
Freddie Holmes
