Toyota to build HD maps for automated vehicles using camera data

Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development and telematics company Carmera are conducting a ‘proof of concept’ project to develop camera-based automation of high definition (HD) maps for roads in Japan. Toyota says the project will help realise its automated mapping platform, an open software concept which supports automated driving by combining data gathered from vehicles of participating companies to generate HD maps. Cameras which use Toyota Safety Sense (TSS) components will be equipped to th
March 5, 2019 Read time: 2 mins
1686 Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development and telematics company Carmera are conducting a ‘proof of concept’ project to develop camera-based automation of high definition (HD) maps for roads in Japan.


Toyota says the project will help realise its automated mapping platform, an open software concept which supports automated driving by combining data gathered from vehicles of participating companies to generate HD maps.

Cameras which use Toyota Safety Sense (TSS) components will be equipped to the company’s test vehicles to collect data and images over several months from areas in downtown Tokyo. This information will then be processed on Carmera’s real-time platform to automatically generate HD map data.

Additionally, dashcam drive records will demonstrate automated map generation from a broader range of sources which do not have TSS.  

According to Toyota, combining these techniques with digital maps available today will provide even more reliable road information to driverless vehicles. Also, generating HD maps based on data acquired from commercially available vehicles will enable automated driving on all roads, the manufacturer says.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Ken Leonard talks to ITS International
    August 21, 2014
    Ken Leonard, director of the USDOT’s ITS Joint Program office made time in his schedule during the Helsinki Congress to speak to ITS International. It has been 18 months since Ken Leonard took over as the director of the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office at the US Department of Transportation. With 30 years of technical experience behind him, to say he is enjoying the challenge would be to put it mildly: “It is incredibly exciting to be working in intelligent transportation systems, th
    Read More
  • Regulating rural road use
    June 20, 2016
    David Crawford looks at problems facing indigenous communities and those unfamiliar with driving in rural areas. While it is well known that the fatality rate for road crashes in rural areas is higher than in towns and cities, some groups suffer far more than others. For instance, the rates of death and serious injury from vehicle accidents is much higher for American Indian and Alaska Native (AI and AN) populations living in rural tribal lands than for any of the country’s other ethnic populations. Crashes
    Read More
  • Towards common standards for cooperative road infrastructures
    July 23, 2012
    Michael Noblett of Connexis discusses international progress towards common standards for cooperative road infrastructures. Will vehicle safety communications standards be able to support ITS on the international level, or will we settle once again for regional interoperability only? The answer lies in the current status of the draft standards themselves, and the requirements users and authorities are placing on the people who draft them.
    Read More
  • Motown morphs into Mobility City
    August 7, 2018
    Detroit was once a byword for urban decay – but ITS America recently held its annual meeting there. This gave David Arminas a chance to assess how fast Motor City is moving down the road to recovery. Motor City, as Detroit is still called, was on its financial knees only five short years ago. The future looked bleak as the city and greater urban area bled jobs and population. It was on 18 July 2013 that Motown, as Detroit is also known, filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, the
    Read More

Highlighted Content