Besides car parts and other industrial gear, manufacturing titan Robert Bosch GmbH now wants to start producing maps too.

The German company, which is a key supplier to many leading automakers, has teamed up with TomTom NV in a newly announced partnership focused on providing road data for autonomous vehicles. The plan is to create a high-resolution mapping service similar to the Road Experience Management platform from Mobileye NV. Instead of relying on video data, however, the companies intend to create maps using radar measurements.

Bosch and TomTom will collect the information from vehicles that feature the former company’s 77-gigahertz radar series. Sensors in the lineup can identify objects as far as 820 feet away compared with the 490-foot maximum detection range of many vehicle cameras. Moreover, they’re able to do so under poor visibility conditions, including at night.

The only snag is that Bosch’s radar sensors are limited to detecting moving objects since they’re designed for use in emergency braking and cruise control systems. As a result, the company will modify the series to make the technology more useful for detecting static objects such as road signs.

Bosch claims that the data collected by its sensors can be compressed to just kilobytes per kilometer, half as much as what video-based platforms offer. But while the company took pains to highlight the advantages of its technology in today’s partnership announcement, the radar service is only intended to supplement platforms like Mobileye’s rather than replace them, at least in the near term.

The partnership is set to see TomTom combine radar readings from Bosch with video data to create a so-called localization layer in its maps. At a high level, the idea is to let autonomous vehicles compare the information they collect on the road with measurements from other cars to determine their relative position. The localization layer will be complemented by a database of static environmental features and potential obstacles such as traffic jams.

To maintain accuracy, Bosh and TomTom plan to continuously update their maps as new information comes in. Bosch board member Dirk Hoheisel said 1 million vehicles will need to be equipped with the upcoming sensors in each target market, namely the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific, to facilitate the necessary refresh rates.

That’s an ambitious goal, but in principle, Bosch and TomTom have the necessary sway in the auto industry to pull it off. The companies expects to start collecting radar data in 2020 “at the latest.”

Image: Pixabay