GISCafe Industry Predictions for 2025 – HERE Technologies

By Damandeep Kochhar, EVP, Chief Platform & Technology Officer at HERE Technologies

Damandeep Kochhar

How Artificial Intelligence is Set to Revolutionize Mapmaking in 2025

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the geospatial industry and unlocking new opportunities in mapmaking, vehicle navigation and essential capabilities to simulate the real-world for testing automated driving systems. In 2025 and beyond, AI will continue to transform our understanding of the world’s geography and how people and goods arrive efficiently and safely from point A to B.

For nearly a decade, advances in cloud computing and AI have played a critical role in transforming the field of mapmaking. At HERE Technologies, we have leveraged high-performance cloud infrastructures to deploy AI and machine learning (ML) models at scale, enabling unprecedented capabilities in automated, real-time map updates. We can process vast amounts of IoT sensor data – tens of millions of kilometers of vehicle sensor data per hour – to create and maintain highly detailed digital maps around the world.

In 2025, additional technologies will enhance AI-powered mapmaking. Semantically aligned maps, for instance, will allow for greater interoperability across systems by ensuring a consistent reference architecture for map attributes. Enhanced satellite and aerial imaging tools, combined with edge computing, will also enable faster data processing, reducing latency and improving real-time accuracy and map freshness.

Improving Vehicle Navigation with AI

Today, AI is revolutionizing navigation by leveraging advanced computing power and tools to identify and update maps in real-time. These systems process terabytes of data from various sources, such as satellite imagery, traffic patterns, and vehicle sensors, ensuring that digital maps reflect the world’s dynamic changes accurately. AI-powered tools are also enabling real-time optimization of routes, using predictive modeling to adapt to traffic conditions, weather, and user-specific navigation patterns. This allows for personalized and efficient guidance, improving safety and reducing travel times.

The latest AI Assistants are transforming navigation further. These systems leverage Generative AI Large Language Models (LLMs) to provide natural language-powered, location-aware guidance. For example, users can request routes optimized for specific preferences, such as avoiding tolls or including stops at EV charging stations with additional amenities like coffee shops. Additionally, these tools enhance fleet management by optimizing routes based on time or cost constraints, improving estimated time of arrival (ETA) calculations, and ensuring driver safety and ease through natural language interactions.

Importantly, over-the-air updates powered by AI ensure that maps are always up to date, providing vehicles and other systems with the latest information with minimal manual changes. This capability is critical for supporting advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving, which rely on high-precision, real-time map data to function safely and efficiently.

Simulating Real-World Road Infrastructure with AI

AI gives us a window into the future through real-world simulations. These simulations integrate vast datasets, AI models, and high-definition 3D maps to create detailed virtual environments. Such tools allow the transportation industry to test and refine automated driving systems under a wide range of conditions, from complex urban scenarios to extreme weather events.

These simulations not only accelerate innovation but also enhance safety by identifying and mitigating risks before deploying new systems on the road. Further, these new tools allow developers to significantly reduce development time, costs and go to market. AI’s ability to ingest and process massive amounts of data is fundamental to creating realistic and varied scenarios that help prepare vehicles and infrastructure for future challenges.

As the transportation industry moves towards fully automated and connected systems, these AI-driven simulation tools will help reduce development costs and become indispensable for ensuring reliability and safety at scale.

The Future of AI-Powered Mapmaking

AI is redefining how we interact with location data and by harnessing its computational power, we can process and update maps in real-time, deliver seamless over-the-air updates, and manage the immense data requirements of modern geospatial systems.

As we embrace this new era, AI-powered geospatial technologies will continue to shape an ever-dynamic relationship with the world around us.

About Author:

Damandeep Kochhar is Chief Platform & Technology Officer at HERE Technologies. In his role, he leads the company’s core engineering activities, including the development and operation of our highly automated mapping system for creating, updating and publishing map content.

Daman joined HERE in 2015, bringing to the company his two decades of experience in the technology and product domains. Much of his early career was spent in senior roles at Genpact, a global professional services company. Daman graduated in Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering and completed his postgraduate in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Tags: Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), Aerial Imaging, AI Assistants, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Automated and Connected Systems, Automated Driving Systems, Cloud Computing, Edge Computing, ETA Calculations, Fleet Management, Generative AI, Geospatial Industry, HERE Technologies, High-Definition 3D Maps, IoT Sensor Data, Large Language Models (LLMs), Location-Aware Guidance, Machine Learning (ML), Mapmaking, Over-the-Air Updates, Predictive Modeling, Real-Time Map Updates, Real-World Simulations, Route Optimization, Safety and Reliability, Satellite Imaging, Semantically Aligned Maps, Transportation Industry, Vehicle Navigation, Virtual Environments

Category: GIS Industry Predictios

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025 at 7:57 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.