Toyota is developing its own crowd-sourced mapping system

Google may provide us with some of the most-detailed maps that are available on the Internet, but its reliance on its own fleet of customized mapping vehicles severely limits how quickly its able to update these maps. In an effort to exploit this limitation, Toyota has developed its own mapping system that utilizes features that are already built-in to some of its existing vehicles, and will basically turn the people driving these vehicles into unwitting map generators. The crowd-sourced mapping data that’s generated will sent to Toyota’s own data centers and turned into a mapping service that’s updated in real-time. Toyota is expected to reveal more details on the project at CES 2016 next month.

Tesla might be using Model S cars to make GPS maps, but Toyota is about to rollout a veritable real-time Google Street View. Toyota announced Tuesday that it will unveil a new system of “high-precision” mapping at the Consumer Electronic Show next month. The mapping system will utilize the high-definition digital cameras — in addition to GPS units — embedded in countless numbers of its cars already on the road today. The video and GPS data gathered will be beamed to Toyota data centers, “where it is automatically pieced together, corrected and updated to generate high precision road maps that cover a wide area,” according to the Toyota press release. Toyota is generating these constantly updated and detailed visual maps for self-driving cars because autonomous vehicles will need to know road conditions, traffic flow and traffic signs. And if these cars know these things before it’s even encountered them — even better. Many of the high-def maps around today are out of date and seldom updated, which would leave your self-driving Toyota in the lurch. The constantly updated map will prevent that from ever happening.