By Satya Vakkaleri, VP of Product
“If we knew everything back then that we know now, we would have made a different decision,” said Boeing’s ex-CEO Dennis Muilenburg during the senate hearing in the aftermath of the two plane crashes that took the lives of 346 people. Boeing, however, knew its system had a problematic single point of failure two years before Max was cleared to fly. The design of the new flight control system was relying on information from just a single angle of attack (AoA) sensor with no redundant system. Needless to say, this debacle led to the…
By Satya Vakkaleri, VP of Product
Opportunity at a time of crisis
Amidst all the gloom surrounding the current pandemic, certain markets are expanding rapidly. Crisis is becoming a catalyst for growth. While market opportunities in video conferencing and tele-medicine are all over the news, the less obvious ones include investments in the autonomous vehicle delivery market that are accelerating the future of autonomy.
Neolix, a maker of urban robo-delivery trucks, has raised $29 million to fund the mass production of its delivery bots. UDI vans have made more than 2,500 autonomous trips, and the company has hired 100 employees to put its assembly line into…
By Scott Harvey, CTO and Satya Vakkaleri, VP Product
To LiDAR or not to LiDAR, that is the question
In the previous blog post, we introduced the concept of using a single sensor for localization. Before jumping into the details of the Civil Maps solution, we would like to take a moment to celebrate the news of Volvo’s next generation of cars to be equipped with LiDAR. It is not surprising that a car manufacturer known to put safety first has bucked the industry trend and decided to use LiDAR.
In the last year, Civil Maps doubled down on its hypothesis that LiDAR would…
By Scott Harvey, CTO and Satya Vakkaleri, VP Product
Where am I?
Accurate estimation of an autonomous vehicle’s position and orientation known as “localization” is not just a prerequisite for decision making and path planning, it is critical for the safe operation of the vehicle. Autonomous vehicles are equipped with different types of sensors such as GPS, IMU, Camera, LiDAR, Wheel Encoders, and Radar that can all help localize the vehicle. Some of these sensors are redundant, providing independent measurements of the same property; while some are complementary, and when combined will provide a more complete representation of the phenomenon under observation. Traditionally…
By Nicholas Stanley, Technical Operator, Civil Maps
Maps can be exceptionally powerful — a well-crafted map can mean the difference between arriving on time… or not arriving at all.
We at Civil Maps have been working tirelessly to bring the next generation of high-definition augmented reality maps (“HD Semantic Maps”) to fruition, but in the case of our recent team-building foray into Napa Valley, a world-renowned culinary and viticultural hub, I didn’t need any special map to navigate.
The city of Napa is my hometown, and it just so happens to be a place that many aspire to make a…
Partnership with Civil Maps and Renovo: Building a Universal Operating System for Automated Mobility
By Paul Drysch, VP of Sales and Business Development
Today’s autonomous vehicle and automated mobility market looks a lot like the early days of the personal computer industry: many players, each building its own proprietary machine: a highly automated vehicle (HAV). When a universal, hardware-agnostic computer operating system (OS) finally came along, it allowed specialized components — video cards, motherboards, modems, hard drives, and etc. — from a variety of manufacturers to work together through a common interface and software to be written once and run across all PCs using the OS. That operating system brought about the personal computer…
By Sravan Puttagunta, CEO and Co-founder, Civil Maps
We’ve all seen augmented reality (AR) in shows such as Monday Night Football, in which broadcasters superimpose virtual lines and diagrams on the field, manually marking up video playbacks to highlight key maneuvers and strategies. This helps viewers easily focus on points of interest, rather than looking at everything on the screen. In this case, augmented reality technology provides an instantaneous, mental shortcut to understanding; viewers don’t need to guess where the action is on their TV or what’s going on. The drawn-in overlay provides that direction. When augmented reality is used…
By Sravan Puttagunta, CEO and Co-founder of Civil Maps
Civil Maps is excited to announce that we’ve migrated our edge-based HD mapping and localization solution to the Arm® family of processors. Arm is the licensor to the largest ecosystem of automotive grade system-on-chips (SoC) and system-on-modules (SoM), with its chips already found in 85% of automotive electronic control units (ECU) on the road. Our team sees this as a key step towards building a truly scalable platform for self-driving car developers. …
By Sravan Puttagunta, Co-founder & CEO of Civil Maps
We are delighted to announce key developments that will accommodate and enhance our rapid growth. Vijay Viswanathan and James Dawson will join the company in our San Francisco headquarters, bringing with them a wealth of experience from the automotive and navigational technology fields. Additionally, we’re expanding into the heart of the Silicon Valley with a new office in Palo Alto that will leverage the area’s diverse high-technology talent pool. …
By Nagesh Gupta, VP of Engineering
Ah, everyone’s excitement about going to CES. I never could understand it, until now. With over 190,000 attendees this year, I don’t think any city could have run CES more smoothly, but it was still quite challenging even for Las Vegas. For starters, I wasn’t prepared for the Uber and Lyft prices to be five times the normal amount and for the gridlock traffic around the convention center. Nor was I prepared for the $500/nightly cost of a no-frills hotel room!
Civil Maps
Cognition for Cars
