Mobileye NV, who build sensors focused on autonomous driving, announced that it is creating a crowd-sourced, constantly updated digital map of the world to allow for fully autonomous driving. Top automakers General Motors Co and Volkswagen Group have already signed on to include the mapping technology into its vehicles.

Mobileye is also expecting a third large automaker to join the project. The name of the automaker is unnamed at this stage, but we know it will not be Tesla Motors Inc. as its cars already use Mobileye vision systems.

The Israeli company will work together with the automakers to build digital maps that would provide a record of three-dimensional landmarks and a one-dimensional record of road conditions. Cameras powered by Mobileye chips and software installed on the cars would gather the map data.

“Cameras are the most natural sensors for creating maps because they are already available in most new car models as part of the trend toward growing driver assistance deployment,” said Amnon Shashua, co-founder, chairman and chief technical officer of Mobileye. “Creating and updating maps using on-board camera technology supplies the missing link between onboard sensing and the requirement for full redundancy to enable safe autonomous driving.”

The Mobileye mapping system uses much less bandwidth, approximately 10kb per kilometer, compared to the more detailed maps used to guide Google’s autonomous vehicles. The company also eventually expects to achieve localization accuracy of about 10 centimeters compared with existing GPS that has an accuracy of about 10 meters.

In response to the recent launch of Nvidia Corp.’s ‘supercomputer’ for self-driving cars, Shashua said, “I think it’s not relevant to our space.” He also thinks the high price of $10,000 also makes it too expensive and its lack of content makes it less useful in the real-world automotive space.

GM are exploring the possibility of incorporating the mapping technology into existing GM program launches later this year. GM and Mobileye have already worked together on camera technology for the last decade.

Volkswagen and the third automaker would likely start building its maps in 2018.

We will have to wait until 2018 before we start to see the benefit of the Mobileye mapping technology while the company expects significant revenues after 2020.

Image via: General Motors