During a test drive near Ford's Michigan headquarters, the Ford team noticed something strange with its self-driving cars. Each car shifted slightly at the same point in the lane "as if they were avoiding a pothole," says Jim McBride, Ford's senior technical leader for autonomous cars.
The problem wasn't the cars -- it was the map.
The team had just updated its 3D map of the test route, which helps guide self-driving cars. But a minor glitch caused one pixel on the map to have the wrong data value. It told the car a spot in the ground was raised 10 inches, when it was perfectly level.
"The new map looked perfect to the human eye," McBride says. But not to the eye of a self-driving car. "A single incorrect pixel," he says, was enough to throw off the cars.
For much of the last decade, digital maps have helped people pull up basic directions while walking and driving. But tech and auto companies are investing in a new generation of maps for a much more demanding audience: self-driving cars. These maps, often referred to as HD maps, go far beyond basic turn-by-turn directions. Some incorporate continuously updating data on lane markings, street signs, traffic signals, potholes and even the height of a curb -- all down to the centimeter.
Unlike traditional navigation systems sold by companies like TomTom, HD maps may need to be updated as much as daily for certain regions. For example, a busy city street that goes through construction and pedestrian areas might need more frequent data than a long, uninterrupted freeway. This opens up the possibility of a subscription model that could one day bring in "billions" for mapping companies.
It will be interesting to see if a new firm is able to pop up and complete this task of HD map creation. My bet is on Google to get it done considering the resources they have available. This brings to question something else though, and that is will another tech company ever be able to really make it big on its own (outside of social media)? Or will everything just get bought up or undertaken by giants like Google, Microsoft, etc.
I'm not an engineer but doesn't it seem risky to be over reliant on maps? Isn't the whole point of an autonomous car being that it can take you from A to B in a manner similar to a human driver?
With this article I have now have some doubts about the performances of the self-driving car industry.
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