Nexar Releases Driver Behavioral Maps to Humanize Robot Drivers

Crowdsourced vision data collected from Nexar’s smart dash cams help AVs stop, merge, turn, and drive the way humans do, providing a safer driving experience

Nexar, a leading AI computer vision company, announced the release of its Driver Behavioral Mapping data. The Driver Behavioral Map gives insight for different road segments, driver types, weather, and road conditions. Nexar’s dash cams capture a wide range of crowd-sourced driving data of actual human driving behavior, and are then aggregated and overlaid on a high definition base map to be used for autonomous and assisted driving.

As local agents who have driven in an area know more than agents who have not, either autonomous or human, AVs will use Nexar’s real-time data to humanize driving by training according to the local driving culture and mapping crucial driving habits. AVs can use these maps to determine when to switch lanes before a turn, how to decelerate when cornering, where virtual stop lines lay, and more.

“A self-driving car that drives only according to a raw map would be an immediate danger due to its robotic style of driving,” said Eran Shir, Co-founder and CEO of Nexar. “It’s not necessarily that humans drive better than robots, it’s that AVs need a lot of human data obtained by those who have driven through a particular area. Without even being aware, we make hundreds of decisions that adapt to local conditions, culture, and comfort each time we get behind the wheel. AVs need to sync into this behavior in order to provide the most secure and comfortable ride.”

Nexar’s Driver Behavioral Map accounts for speed distribution, acceleration distribution, turn probability at intersections, switching lanes probability, and virtual cross-walks, among many others. Providing a smooth and safe ride, the behaviorally trained AVs will better understand, measure, and benchmark safety-related behavior (stop lines, school zones etc.), as well as drive better based on road conditions and visibility. Nexar’s maps will empower AVs with human driving behavior, while having the safety advances of a robot driver.

“Nexar is used by both commercial and ordinary drivers, during all hours of the day, on different road segments, and in all weather conditions,” continued Shir. “There is no more efficient or cost-effective way to collect this diverse set of human driving data that is such a crucial part of our journey to advance a safe future for autonomous driving. With the right data, an AV operating off of Nexar’s Driver Behavioral Map will continue on the road to becoming indistinguishable from a human-driven car in terms of the flow of driving.”

Cars outfitted with Nexar’s smart dash cams drive over 160 million miles per month, delivering valuable driving data all over the US. By accessing a real-time record of how other vehicles drive on the same road segment at different times of day, AVs can ‘see’ what’s ahead, and make use of a map that is constantly refreshed. The maps cover all 50 states.

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