Maps: The billion dollar war in self-driving car market - AI Trends

During a test drive near Ford's Michigan headquarters, the team noticed something strange with its self-driving cars. Each car shifted slightly at the same point in the lane "as if they were avoiding a pothole," says Jim McBride, Ford's senior technical leader for autonomous cars. The problem wasn't the cars -- it was the map. The team had just updated its 3D map of the test route, which helps guide self-driving cars. But a minor glitch caused one pixel on the map to have the wrong data value. It told the car a spot in the ground was raised 10 inches, when it was perfectly level.