Trillian, TomTom’s autonomous driving test vehicle.
Hitting the road with TomTom’s autonomous driving test car
Imagine a autonomous test vehicle traveling the streets of Berlin with a specially trained safety driver and a software engineer aboard, at all times. We plan to use the knowledge gained from testing our technology to further hone the services we are developing to make autonomous vehicles (AV) work.
Almost everyone involved in autonomous driving research and development believe that high-definition (HD) maps are a critical component for safe, effective and efficient autonomous driving. Based on years of dedicated research, we at TomTom wholeheartedly agree.
HD maps provide, in great detail, a precise view of the roadway’s features. They are among several overlapping capabilities – including cameras, radar and lidar – that provide the redundancies necessary for an AV to complete its journey. Without maps, autonomous driving will be harder to execute and not nearly as safe.
Trillian needs to think smarter and faster than everyone else on the road, so we developed TomTom AutoStream to continually deliver the most recent and relevant HD Map data from the cloud. When something on the road environment changes, no matter how small, we want Trillian to be the first to know.
Our HD Maps are being used by multiple global carmakers for deployment in their vehicles and we plan to use our customized test vehicle to reveal to our developers exactly what we have done – and what we are capable of. Taking it for a spin – make that, thousands of spins – will accelerate feedback cycles and offer us insights that will inform our research.