Push for global standard for automated vehicle mapping data

HERE is driving a global standard for vehicle-to-cloud data – bringing the promise of automated vehicles closer to reality

Mapping company HERE has submitted a design for a universal data format which it says will drive a global standard for vehicle-to-cloud data – bringing the promise of automated vehicles closer to reality.

Following discussions with international automotive and mapping companies in Europe, the US and Asia, HERE has submitted the design for the innovation platform called SENSORIS to ERTICO, which can evolve into a standardised interface specification for use broadly across the automotive industry.

HERE believes that pooling analogous vehicle data from millions of vehicles will be a key enabler for highly and fully automated driving, ensuring that each vehicle has a near real-time view of road conditions and hazards that can lead to better driving decisions.

The company is developing the required location cloud technology that can detect and process changes in the real world as they happen – including on roads in dozens of countries – on an industrial scale and at high quality. HERE is putting this infrastructure in place ahead of anticipated new streams of vehicle sensor data it will be processing in its location platform in future.

“Our goal was always to find a home for this specification that is open, accessible to all and global. This is a vital step along the path to creating a shared information network for safer roads,” said Dietmar Rabel, head of autonomous driving product management at HERE. “If a car around the next corner hits the brakes because there’s an obstruction, that information could be used to signal to the drivers behind to slow down ahead of time, resulting in smoother, more efficient journeys and a lower risk of accidents. But that can only work if all cars can speak and understand the same language.”

Hermann Meyer, chief executive officer at ERTICO, said: “Defining a standardised interface for exchanging information between the in-vehicle sensors and a dedicated cloud as well as between clouds will enable broad access, delivery and processing of vehicle sensor data; enable easy exchange of vehicle sensor data between all players, and finally enable enriched location based services which are key for mobility services as well as for automated driving.”

To date, 11 major automotive and supplier companies have already joined the SENSORIS Innovation Platform now under the coordination of ERTICO. They are: AISIN AW, Robert Bosch, Continental, Daimler, Elektrobit, HARMAN, HERE, LG Electronics, NavInfo, PIONEER and TomTom. More organisations are expected to join in the coming weeks.

SENSORIS was initiated by HERE in June 2015 when the company published the first open specification for how vehicle sensor data gathered by connected cars could be sent to the cloud for processing and analysis. Currently, vehicle sensor data exists in multiple different formats across automotive manufacturers.