autoregion international 2/2020 - Greater Region Mobility Innovation

10 Developing autonomous driving technology Silicon Valley-based start-up Civil Maps has developed a unique, scalable high definition, 3Dmapping and localisation solution suitable for routing autonomous vehicles. One year after setting up its European HQ in Luxembourg, the company takes the next step in its technology development together with the University of Luxembourg. Known for decades as an automotive centre with companies like Goodyear, IEE, Carlex, Delphi and CEBI International, Luxembourg today also hosts an increasing number of innovative mobility start-ups. New com- panies include, for example, electric scooter producer Ujet, driving risk assessment spe- cialist Motion-S and e-payment specialist Mercedes Pay, which are selling across the European market. Another recent addition is Civil Maps, a company originating from the smart mobility innovation hotspot in Silicon Valley. Fingerprint Base Map™ technology Civil Maps started in 2013 with a specific ob- jective: finding a way to avoid head-on colli- sions between trains caused by challenging weather or human error. “In the United States, the authorities passed the Positive Train Control Enforcement and Implemen- tation Act of 2015, mandating the ability to monitor all trains and know where each one was at any given moment,” says CEO Ste- fan Safko. “They had already collected large amounts of data but did not know how to transform it into useful information. We took their raw data and developed a method to create high-definition maps that allowed us to localise the trains and enable asset management.” A meeting with the board of directors of one of the large US automotive manufacturers two years later encouraged the young com- pany to look into applying its technology for localising autonomous vehicles. After raising capital from a number of investors, the Civil Maps team developed a method for creating Image: © Zapp2Photo/shutterstock.com S H A R E