Mapping for Autonomous Driving: Opportunities and Challenges

This article provides a review of the production and uses of maps for autonomous driving and a synthesis of the opportunities and challenges. For many years, maps have helped human drivers make better decisions, and in the future, maps will continue to play a critical role in enabling safe and successful autonomous driving. There are, however, many technical, societal, economic, and political challenges to mapping that remain unresolved. While fully autonomous driving may be some distance in the future, intermediate steps to realize the technology can be taken. These include developing an efficient and reliable storage and dissemination infrastructure, defining minimum data quality requirements, and establishing an international mapping standard. The article closes with 11 open research challenges for mapping for autonomous driving.