Report calls for industry-wide consensus on CAV-specific mapping data

A new report from Zenzic reveals that getting self-driving vehicles on UK roads by 2030 will require industry-wide consensus to create large-scale platforms for the collecting, processing and sharing of connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) specific mapping data.

The report, entitled Geodata report – analysis and recommendations for self-driving vehicle testing Zenzic consultation findings, aims to help the self-driving vehicle industry agree on defining how mapping data can be shared between companies and authorities, to speed up the development of safe self-driving vehicles, without hindering competition.

According to the report’s findings, solving the current fragmentation of geospatial mapping data is vital in ensuring and enabling self-driving vehicles to be safely on the road both in the UK and globally. It offers initial steps towards creating a consensus on mapping requirements based on industry-wide feedback and recommendations across six key areas: data formats, data quality and resolution, terminology, minimum safe requirements and standards, government data and traffic regulation orders (TROs) and data hosting.

“This report shows that the global self-driving vehicle development industry agrees that mapping data needs to be easily shareable for us to achieve the goal of having self-driving vehicles on our streets by 2030,” said Daniel Ruiz, CEO of Zenzic. “When it comes to the maps which will form the basis of how self-driving vehicles see the world, the details matter, from how this data is shared, to what resolution of mapping data is deemed safe. The UK is well placed to lead the development of standards and regulation as organisations like OS and BSI have done some for decades.”

The report also showed that mapping data quality, specifically accuracy and precision of such data, is considered more important than resolution, while the sector also agreed that it should follow other industry’s, such as gaming, in finding common terminology, in addition to working closely with the British Standards Industry (BSI) and the Open Geospatial Consortium.