Posted on Wednesday, September 28 2016 @ 15:42 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
GPS sat nav units are no longer a hot growth market so companies like TomTom are struggling to find new sources of profit. Today the company surprises with a co-announcement with NVIDIA, as the companies announced a deal to jointly develop a system to create a cloud-to-car mapping system for self-driving cars:
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) and TomTom (TOM2), the Dutch mapping and navigation group, today announced they are partnering to develop artificial intelligence to create a cloud-to-car mapping system for self-driving cars.
The work combines TomTom's extensive HD map coverage, which already spans more than 120,000 km of highways and freeways, with the NVIDIA DRIVE™ PX 2 computing platform. Together, the solution accelerates support for real-time in-vehicle localization and mapping for driving on the highway.
NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced the collaboration at the company's inaugural GTC Europe, a regional version of its annual GPU Technology Conference in Silicon Valley, now in its seventh year.
"Self-driving cars require a highly accurate HD mapping system that can generate an always up-to-date HD map in the cloud," said Rob Csongor, vice president and general manager of Automotive at NVIDIA. "DRIVE PX 2 for AutoCruise provides TomTom with a real-time, in-vehicle source for HD map updates."
The NVIDIA DriveWorks software development kit now integrates support for TomTom's HD mapping environment. The open solution is available for all automakers and tier 1 suppliers developing autonomous vehicles.
"This collaboration is an important step for TomTom," said Willem Strijbosch, head of Autonomous Driving at TomTom. "Combining our highly accurate HD maps with NVIDIA's self-driving car platform will enable us to propose new features to automakers faster, and therefore to make autonomous driving a commercial reality sooner."
GTC Europe attendees can see firsthand what goes on inside the brain of a self-driving car. Demonstrations of the DRIVE PX 2 AI car computer and NVIDIA DriveWorks software for object detection, free space calculation, map localization and path planning will be on display at the event, Sept. 28-29, at Amsterdam's Passenger Terminal building.
