Capelle aan den IJssel, the Netherlands – 7 April 2016 – AND today announced a licensing agreement with CycloMedia. This empowers AND’s capability to deploy data generated by cars in its digital maps, starting with a pilot project in 2016. This enhances AND’s growth prospects in the automotive sector, which is on the brink of new developments driven by technology and an important user of digital maps.
Within this license agreement CycloMedia makes data available to AND. With this data AND will pilot the ability to automatically derive a high definition attribution database to attribute its navigation maps in a cost effective manner. Such an ability is relevant to current developments in the automotive sector towards the self-driving car.
AND already uses anonymized user-generated GPS traces to update and enrich its digital maps. By adding data like traffic signs, from sensor technologies inside the car and image recognition techniques, AND will be able to automatically and continuously enrich and update its maps to an unprecedented completeness, accuracy and reliability.
In addition, AND is happy to announce that it has been enrolled as a member of ADASIS, a platform for car manufacturers and map makers to standardize interface between in-vehicle ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) applications and map data sources. Partners of ADASIS include car manufacturers (like BMW, Daimler, FORD, Honda, Renault, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo) and map makers (like HERE and TomTom). See adasis.org for more info.
AND CEO Hugo van der Linde: “The agreement with CycloMedia, and the consequent pilot, is an important step in the further development of the offering of our company and its innovative approach to developing digital maps. Since some time we are investigating opportunities in the automotive sector and this pilot is a logical step. We do have a high-quality product and structural coverage of important regions like North America and Europe in place, due to targeted investments in the past years. Our robust financial position enables us to fund the involved investments, while large international companies have recognized our position, given the two large contracts awarded to us in the last period.”
This is an English translation of the Dutch press release. In the event of any disparity between the Dutch original and this translation, the Dutch text will prevail.