General Motors is being pretty hands-off with its most recent acquisition of Cruise Automation. Cruise does its thing and continues developing, engineering and honing self-driving car technology for the General.
In the meantime, it looks like Cruise is ready to jump into the realm of HD mapping, per a job posting discovered by The Wall Street Journal. HD mapping goes beyond regular mapping by taking crucial data from LiDar, radar and other visual information. Its accuracy is pinned to every last millimeter.
Per the job listing, Cruise’s HD mapping will eventually cover 100 cities and could create an in-house solution for GM. Other companies have been in the HD mapping business for some time, including Civil Maps and HERE. In the future, many automakers may simply tap a company as a supplier for HD mapping, but by Cruise’s efforts, GM could actually own the solution itself.
Helping GM’s case is the fact it already has a fleet of autonomous cars perusing streets that collect critical data for such mapping processes. Most recently, GM produced its first batch of autonomous cars through a conventional assembly. Those cars will be deployed in various states in the coming months.
Comment
Pretty cool stuff. GM needs to continue to exploit its lead in these developing fields.