Map Manifest Hashing for Faster Vehicle Map Updates
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Solution Overview
Problem
The large size of map data required for vehicle navigation poses challenges in storage and access, particularly due to the time-consuming process of updating map data on-board vehicles via networks, and existing solutions fail to efficiently manage data duplication and changes.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a content-addressable storage system that uses hash functions to uniquely identify map data files, allowing for efficient determination of changed files and avoiding duplication, with techniques for recursive map manifest management and checksum validation to ensure data integrity during uploads and downloads.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Speed
If map data is stored locally on-board the vehicle, then access speed is improved, but storage space requirements increase and update time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments map data into multiple map versions (first version and second version) stored separately in memory. This allows the system to maintain multiple versions without duplicating entire datasets, reducing overall storage requirements while enabling fast access to current map data for vehicle navigation.
2Reliability
If map data is updated via network, then data freshness is improved, but update time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by pre-processing and versioning map data before it needs to be used. Map data is updated in the background and versioned in advance, allowing the system to switch between versions without interruption to vehicle operations. This reduces update time impact while maintaining data freshness.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates simplified copies or references to map data in different versions rather than storing complete duplicate datasets. This allows multiple versions to coexist in memory with reduced storage overhead, enabling fast switching between versions during updates while maintaining data reliability.
3Loss of information
If complete map data is transmitted, then data completeness is improved, but network usage increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and transmits only the essential or changed portions of map data rather than complete datasets. By identifying and transmitting only necessary updates between map versions, the system maintains data completeness for navigation purposes while significantly reducing network usage and energy consumption.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques are discussed for generating, maintaining, and accessing maps to be used for vehicle localization and navigation. A map of a region may include map data representing discrete tiles of the region, and be associated with a map manifest listing pointers to content of the map. In some cases, the map manifest may have a recursive structure which references other map manifests. The map files may be stored on a storage system that avoids duplication and allows efficient determination of changes to content. For example, the stored map files may each be associated with a content-based hash value, which may be incorporated into a filename or URI of the map file. Computing systems on a vehicle may use comparison of the content-based hash values to determine files that have changed and need to be downloaded. The computing systems may also use hash values to determine accuracy of downloaded files.