By Shin Y.O

Precision road map developed to open the era of autonomous vehicles will be available free of charge by National Geographic Information Institute (NGII) from Feb. 29. This is one of the follow-up measures to support commercialization of autonomous vehicles announced at the 3rd Minister’s Conference for Regulatory Reform held on May 2015.

As precision road map, together with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), cameras and various sensors, is essential for autonomous vehicles, it has to be developed by car manufacturers, research institutes and venture companies in their R&D.

However, they face great difficulty due to their limitation in budget, technological capacity, etc. The goal of freely available precision road map is to actively support brisk R&D activities of car manufacturers as well as academics and research institutes, contributing to the commercialization of autonomous vehicles by 2020.


▲ Sample images of precision road map (crossroads)

The precision road map includes an electronic map (with 3-dimenstional coordinates) developed to provide information of lanes (regulation lines, boundary lines, stop lines and crossroad center lines), road facilities (median strips, tunnels, bridges and underground roadways) and sign facilities (traffic signs, road markings and signals) to the precision of 25 cm.

 
▲ A sample image of precision road map (straight line part)

The precision road map will be available through personal visit to NGII from Feb. 29. NGII also stated its plan to further develop precision road map optimized for autonomous vehicles by gathering user opinions including applicability evaluation, etc.