HERE Technologies was actually a spin off from Nokia’s mapping application which was acquired by a consortium of auto makers. Now they have just announced the launch of the new generation of its HERE Real-Time Traffic service. What is it in a nutshell? In comparison, Waze relies on data from users who help report traffic as well as users who have the app running. HERE uses the data from live vehicle sensors from Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz to provide real time traffic data.
HERE Real-Time Traffic is available to current customers in over 60 countries. They claim that data collected through this method offers significant improvements in traffic flow data, especially on arterial roads. In 30 of those countries, the service also provides incident information with features such as Traffic Safety Warning.
“This is the world’s first traffic service to aggregate live rich vehicle sensor data from competing car brands and it represents a major step by HERE to make driving safer and more efficient for people everywhere,” said Ralf Herrtwich, Senior Vice President Automotive at HERE Technologies. “While it helps drivers making informed decisions behind the wheel today, it also moves us closer to realising our vision of a live representation of the road environment needed for both advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and self-driving applications.”
Andrew Hart, Director at SBD Labs, said: “High quality traffic information is the cornerstone of a good navigation experience. Traffic information providers often define their capabilities by the number of probes they collect data from, but data richness will increasingly become the defining factor between a good service and an excellent one. The dozens of sensors equipped on modern cars make them the richest possible source of real-time traffic data. HERE has developed a win-win approach to accessing and analyzing rich vehicle data.“
HERE already gathers billions of GPS data points every day and leverages over 100 different probe and incident sources to provide a robust foundation for HERE Real-Time Traffic. HERE is also integrating data from millions of Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz cars, with the fleet size expected to further grow during 2018 and beyond. To further enrich the service, HERE is concurrently expanding the population of commercial vehicles from which it gathers conventional probe data.
Data gathered by HERE would definitely assist users as well as other technology firms such as those working on self-driving technology. Additional data points would assist AI in making decisions. Other groups who would benefit from these data include town planners, logistics providers and also ride sharing firms. HERE also provides their location services to companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Baidu and Samsung.
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