Location and navigation services provider Here Technologies has formed a partnership with autonomous mobility software developer Renovo to create an open ecosystem of best-in-class technologies that will work seamlessly together in future automated transportation systems.
The two companies have entered into a partnership to deploy open interfaces for highly and fully automated vehicles. The partners believe that an open-standards approach will fuel greater interoperability and data exchange across the transportation ecosystem, boosting safety, efficiency and comfort for passengers.
In the first phase of their collaboration, Renovo and Here are working on a new technology interface to maximize the utility of sensor data generated by fleets of automated vehicles in the ‘self-healing’ of highly precise maps.
The companies intend to make the interface available for fleets of highly automated vehicles powered by Renovo’s AWare operating system, enabling them to provide data that can be used to update a service such as Here’s HD Live Map for connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs).
The HD Live Map service uses different types of sensor data to identify changes in the real world and provide a highly-precise, continuously-updating map across the road network. An automated vehicle equipped with the ‘self-healing’ HD Live Map knows exactly where it is and has a better understanding of what lies ahead and what it should do in different scenarios.
As part of the new collaboration, Here’s HD Map will gather data from Renovo’s AWare Operating System for autonomous vehicles. AWare merges software, data analytics and automotive-grade safety systems into a unified platform that enables a growing range of technologies and services to be combined in Automated Mobility-on-Demand (AMoD) fleet deployments.
AWare is already powering some of the highly automated vehicle fleets that are currently operating on public and private roads, including that of Voyage.auto. Here is the newest addition to Renovo’s rapidly growing AWare ecosystem, which includes Samsung, Verizon, Velodyne Lidar, Parsons, Inrix, Argus Cyber Security, Affectiva, Phantom Auto, Metamoto, Understand.ai, NIRA Dynamics, and Bestmile.
As a privately held company, Here is backed by several investors, including Audi, BMW, Bosch, Continental, Daimler, Intel and Pioneer, so under this new partnership, Renovo is joining one of the largest technology ecosystems in the global automotive industry.
“As we build the data infrastructure required for autonomous cars, collaboration between key technology providers and across industries is mandatory,” said Edzard Overbeek, CEO of Here Technologies. “With AWare, Renovo has a powerful operating system for automated vehicles. Our partnership and integration into the AWare ecosystem will help expand access to data that’s vital to building automated mobility systems that people can trust.”
Chris Heiser, CEO and co-founder of Renovo, commented, “Here Technologies is a leading creator of mapping and location services with a bold ‘Autonomous World Vision’, and we are delighted to enter into this partnership with them. We enable our customers to develop and deploy fleets of highly automated vehicles, and these deployments are made possible by an open ecosystem of best-in-class technologies.”
