As per the latest reports, automobile giant General Motors (GM) has filed a blockchain-based patent to update its already existing navigation map system. Through this update, General Motors aims to accumulate and integrate data from vehicle sensors and implement those to create a navigation map for autonomous vehicles.
The patent application explains, “A system for updating a distributed navigation map for a motor vehicle includes one or more sensors that evaluate and characterize a surrounding around the motor vehicle and a discrepancy detector that identifies differences in the surrounding compared to a known navigation map based on information received from the one or more sensors. The differences are transmitted to a blockchain map network,”
GM argues that the existing maps will incur large costs if those are to be made dynamic. The current blockchain-based solution will accumulate data from vehicles around the world through sensors. This data will then be tallied on a discrepancy detector in order to find loopholes, which will essentially optimize the accuracy of the existing maps.
The discrepancy detector will transmit the difference into a blockchain network. If a similar discrepancy in map data is reported to other vehicles, then it will be validated by the blockchain network.
It is being speculated that this distributed blockchain-based process will enable GM to cover the majority of the roads in the US. The patent further clarifies that the distributed map generation process will also allow multiple vendors to contribute to creating a reliable map.
General Motors’ Investment in Blockchain
GM has been an active player in the automobile-blockchain space. In 2018, it patented a blockchain communication system to enable communication with autonomous cars.
Last year, it tested a blockchain-based payment and identification system for vehicles.
GM’s finance department led Spring Labs’ $23 million funding round in 2019 to mitigate fraud in the automobile industry.
