EMG User Conference 2018 Wraps Up Successfully after Several Discussions on the Future of the Auto Industry

BEIJING, May 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- On April 26, 2018, EMG User Conference 2018, organized by eMapgo Technologies (Beijing) Co., Ltd., was held successfully at China World Summit Wing in Beijing. Over 400 people from nearly 50 auto makers, most major system vendors, many famous AI companies and other partners within the industry joined the conference to share their insights on the hot topics related to connected vehicle and autonomous driving.

EMG CEO Darwin Lu

Mr. Lu summarized EMG's achievements in 2017 - establishing a highly automated HD map production line, providing ADAS verification & simulation service for AV, delivering more comprehensive connected car service solutions, launching online world map to serve global users and ranking 3^rd in OEM map vendors with 26% of OEM in-vehicle navigation map market share.

He pointed out that EMG is a neutral mapping company and will focus on serving its customers without intervention from its shareholders. With a philosophy of "cooperation, openness and sharing", EMG upholds an open mind to deal with the issues of cooperation and competition. It is willing to cooperate with other companies, even though some of them may sometime become EMG's competitors.

Mr. Lu believed a new business model of connected vehicle service is evolving and it will create more values for auto-makers and value chain providers. He revealed that EMG is also focusing on R&D of HD map to prepare for the upcoming opportunities of L2.5-L3 autonomous driving.

EMG Vice President Vincent Yang

Mr. Yang shared EMG's roadmap of autonomous driving. It plans to combine the strengths of two technical approaches, one that relies on heavy sensors including LiDar, Camera, IMU, RTK GPS etc. and the other that only relies on light sensors like camera and IMU, to meet the requirements of quick covering, real-time updates and positioning accuracy of an HD map.

He added that HD map is not only useful for autonomous driving but also can be widely applied in intelligent transportation and other fields.

EMG Vice President Dr. Hanke Zhao

Dr. Zhao said, with tens of millions of vehicle probe data and hundreds of millions of mobile probe data, EMG is building a "live road network" with three layers, base road network layer, dynamic layer and real-time layer. In the base road network layer, EMG's map has covered near 7-million-kilometer roads and will cover 8.5 million kilometers by the end of 2018. The dynamic layer includes information of road networks, such as regional traffic restrictions, reversible lanes and road construction. By July 2018, regional traffic restriction information will cover all cities with documented traffic restriction rules. In the real-time traffic layer, over 120 cities, all highways and 85% of national & provincial roads have been covered.

Dr. Zhao also stressed that with its partners, EMG has already created a competitive connected car service solution which has been chosen by several OEMs.

Tsinghua University Director of Center for Intelligent & Connected Vehicle and Transportation Prof. Keqiang Li

Prof. Li said the industrialization of intelligent & connected vehicles urgently needs to build up five base platforms, including HD Map Data Base Platform, Cloud Control Base Platform for Intelligent & Connected Vehicles, Cloud Control Base Platform, in-Vehicle Intelligent Computing Base Platform and New Intelligent Vehicle Terminal Base Platform. The industrialization of these five base platforms will bring synergy to serve for the national strategy of intelligent and connected vehicles.

Ygomi Chairman (founder of NAVTEQ) T. Russell Shields

Mr. Shields said precise localization is a key to highly automated driving. Absolute position is not needed, but precise, meter-by-meter, lateral and longitudinal localization to 10cm within the lane is necessary.

Mr. Shields pointed out that the road database for highly automated driving is not a map, because it has no street names and addresses, no POIs and is only used by machines. He emphasized that as the road database for highly automated driving must be completely reliable, it must be created only by software without any human intervention.

Mapbox Vice President Alex Barth

Mr. Barth revealed that each day, Mapbox collects 225 million miles of probe data and use them to update a live map in real time. He demonstrated to the audiences how Mapbox applies its new mapping technologies to unlimited usage cases.

Altran UK Automotive & Product Unit Chief Engineer Michael Welsh

Mr. Welsh addressed the complexity of connected vehicle and autonomous driving and emphasized the software framework in a vehicle needs to be changed. Altran has developed coherenSE^@platform with new SOA frameworks. It can avoid functional domain names to help manufacturers and suppliers get rid of the limits of software and hardware management within the production chain of intelligent vehicles. 

Momenta Co-Founder and CTO Dr. Gang Sun

Dr. Sun said autonomous driving will largely improve the travel safety and lower the travel costs. In order to commercialize autonomous driving as soon as possible, Momenta adopts a progressive approach, at the current stage, that is a visual recognition technical path at a relative low cost. This path requires a strong capability of AI algorithm which is exactly Momenta's core competence.

GNSS and LBS Association of China Chief Scientist Chong Cao

Mr. Cao said looking back to the history of US loosening SA and China relaxing the restrictions of the digital navigable map, it can be speculated that precision is a false proposition and it will not be an obstacle of the development of autonomous driving. People should focus on reliability, safety and system of autonomous driving and tackle the difficulties of fusion of technologies, policies, regulations, standards, verifications, costs and safety.

Mr. Cao suggested that the undergoing formulation of Satellite Navigation Regulation will be a very good chance for introducing autonomous driving to related regulations. He pointed out that in order to promote government legislation, the industry should provide the government solid and pertinent research reports to help it make right decisions. Industrial association like GNSS and LBS Association can play an important role.

Z Ventures Group Chairman Dr. Vincent Tao

Dr. Tao believes that the future of the mapping industry belongs to AI and spatial big data. Mapping is transforming from for Earth to for human and to for machine. Correspondingly，the source of needed data is transforming from mapping and surveying, to big data of human behaviors and to big data of robot behaviors.

With all of these opinions and predictions, the participants of the conference look forward to what the industry has to offer in the future.

SOURCE eMapgo Technologies (Beijing) Co., Ltd.