Amsterdam, Netherlands | January 7, 2025 - TomTom, the mapping company and specialist in location technologies, today announced a significant enhancement to its Orbis Maps, by offering immersive 3D lane geometry with unprecedented coverage.
Through the expansion of its lane geometry data powered by AI-enabled updates, TomTom Orbis Maps will be able to offer lane-level precision, measured in centimeters, on a global scale with continuous refreshes. This is poised to revolutionize how industries utilize mapping technology, driving efficiencies and opening up new use cases across the automotive, logistics, and public sectors.
Most newly released vehicles now come equipped with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), which rely on high-definition maps for reliability and safety. In light of the increasing automation of driving functions at level L2 and above, the demand for better, real-time accuracy on all roads continues to grow. However, the heavy and costly resources required up until now to produce such maps have limited their availability to freeways and main roads.
By harnessing the latest advances in AI, including fundamental vision models, TomTom Orbis Maps can now produce a 3D lane geometry for every single road. This feat is made possible by advanced technology that merges observations from crowdsourced production vehicles, dashcams, aerial and satellite imagery, and lidar surveys, among others. The resulting 3D map is fresh, high-coverage, accurate and cost-effective.
With every road surface, every painted line mapped accurately and combined with behavioral speeds and trajectories of millions of drivers, TomTom Orbis Maps will enable automakers to accelerate their automation ambitions, enabling navigation in complex urban environments through better anticipation of tricky situations, such as busy intersections or high-speed junctions.
The automation enabled by TomTom Orbis Maps advancements has also far-reaching benefits for other industries. Last-mile logistics can be significantly improved by enabling transport companies to optimize their pickup and drop-off processes, leading to substantial time and cost savings. Additionally, urban planners can benefit from greater granularity in map data to make informed decision-making in lane-level traffic management, bike lane and public transport planning, or parking space optimization.
“Our enhancements to TomTom Orbis Maps represent a transformative step in mapping technology,” said Mike Schoofs, Chief Revenue Officer of TomTom. “With its unmatched coverage and precision for immersive 3D lane geometry, Orbis Maps provide a cost-effective solution for businesses. These innovations not only accelerate the development of automated driving but also provide urban planners and government officials with the insights they need to create smarter, more efficient cities.”
Source: Press Release
