Dubai: Now, a self-driving car will be mapping Dubai’s landmarks and streets to prepare the geospatial 3D map of the whole city.
The new self-driving car replaces the vehicle using Lidar technology that was earlier used to capture the 3D map of Dubai.
The car is used for the municipality’s Geo Dubai project, an initiative to organise and facilitate geo-engineering procedures in the emirate under the slogan “All Dubai is here,” the civic body said in a press release.
Dawoud Al Hajri, director general of Dubai Municipality, said the civic body worked to prepare the new car, with which it will be racing ahead of time in preparation for entering the era of self-driving cars in Dubai.
This is to achieve Dubai’s strategy of self-driving transport by 2030, where 25% of the journeys will depend on this type of car, in order to meet the mechanisms of the future.
Al Hajri explained the story of designing and equipping the new self-driving car, pointing out that the idea, development and design, relied mainly on the Municipality team consisting of UAE nationals, consulting with international companies specialized in the field in some stages.
“We have adopted this idea and encouraged our national cadre to carry out the implementation, after the great success achieved by the spatial surveying vehicle with Lidar technology, which was approved last year, and entered the service efficiently and won the admiration of everyone for filming roads and landmarks of Dubai, bridges, trees and all projects with great accuracy and all of that was directly installed on the Dubai Geospatial Map,” he said.
The self-driving car uses the Mobile Eye device, a geospatial camera installed on the windshield of the vehicle, which identifies and captures the locations and types of landmarks in the city, and collects geospatial information with precision using machine learning technology and geospatial Artificial Intelligence.
“Its task is to capture all the places the car is passing through and update all the data and enter it directly to the Dubai Geospatial map. That is how our slogan became “All Dubai is here,” Mariam Obaid Al Muhairi, director of Dubai Municipality’s GIS Centre said.
The car was unveiled recently at the GITEX Exhibition 2019.
