HARMAN, a global leader in connected car technology and lifestyle audio innovations recently announced the launching of a new product for connected vehicles, the Smart Delta for Maps. The product is designed to enable car manufacturers to boost new HD Maps updates more frequently leading to availability of up-to-date information for the driver in real-time such as recent road works or availability of parking spots.
For the record, HARMAN is a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics and specializes in developing technologies for automotive, consumer and enterprise markets.
The new product is supposed to be a part of the Over-The-Air (OTA) solution designed by the company that is supposed to be an industry leading resource-efficient product. Sources close to the matter report that the new product is meant to resolve some of the challengers faced by Smart Delta for Maps such as difficulties in updating over intermittent internet coverage and limited size updates. The new solution developed by Harman can reduce the size of a map so that it becomes only 2.5% of the original size of the full map image. HARMAN has also re-engineered the update process to occur near real-time instead of taking days.
Oren Betzaleli, Senior VP, Software Platforms, Connected Services at HARMAN has been reported to say that the maps currently availed through smartphones provide consumers with simple navigation instructions. The case would be different for Level 3 or 4 semi-autonomous vehicles which will need to make on-road decisions and therefore need more detailed and accurate maps.
Betzaleli claimed that OEMs and map providers, with the new Smart Delta for Maps for connected vehicles, will be able to reduce the size of map updates which will lead to reduction in cost as well as reduction in amount of storage required on the vehicle.
HARMAN claims that its new Smart Delta for Maps can smoothly integrate with the OTA service by the map provider.