Albany startup grows the ‘brains’ of self-driving cars

When traveling through an unfamiliar neighborhood, drivers tend to slow down to give their brains time to process new information, such as stop lights, speed bumps and street signs.

But the computerized brains of self-driving cars might not have to be as cautious if Civil Maps, a small Albany startup, can advance its 3-D mapping technology.

The 2-year-old company’s system, which has caught the attention of Ford Motor Co., is designed to rely on millions of self-driving cars equipped with technology to constantly scan and catalog local streets and highways, instantly updating a big cloud-based memory bank shared by other autonomous vehicles.

Large numbers of self-driving cars are clearly a ways off — so in the meantime, Civil Maps is developing its own mapping technology. But its long-term goal remains crowdsourcing the vehicles’ data, which Civil Maps believes will reduce the strain on the computers controlling autonomous vehicles. The idea is similar to the way human drivers feels more comfortable in a familiar neighborhood because the strain on the brain is lessened by knowledge gained during previous trips, said Civil Maps CEO Sravan Puttagunta.

“So even if your autonomous car’s never been to Los Angeles, it will inherit the cognition of a million other cars,” Puttagunta said. (How many other companies will participate in expanding Civil Maps’ knowledge base remains an open question; Civil Maps has research and development contracts with other companies, according to product manager Anuj Gupta, though he declined to name them.)

The auto industry is already investing heavily in digital navigation. Last year, BMW, Audi and Daimler spent $2.8 billion to buy digital mapping company Here from Nokia.

Last month, Ford announced that it had invested an undisclosed amount in Civil Maps as part of the Detroit automaker’s ambitious goal to put fully autonomous ride-hailing cars on the road by 2021. Ford was part of a $6.6 million seed round led by Motus Ventures that also included Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures.

“Investing in and working with Civil Maps gives us an additional way to develop 3-D high-resolution maps, which will bring fully autonomous Ford vehicles a step closer to reality for consumers,” Ford said Friday.

Civil Maps is taking “an interesting approach,” said Susan Shaheen, co-director of UC Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center.

High-definition maps can help self-driving vehicles deal with unforeseen problems such as congestion, construction or accidents.

“An autonomous vehicle has its own technology on board, so it is not communicating with outside sensors,” Shaheen said in an email. In other words, a self-driving car may not be able to see changes to a physical object that is out of view of the car — something Civil Maps’ technology wants to address.

During a demonstration ride in a regular car this week, Gupta showed how the technology cataloged and recognized a stoplight at Peralta and Marin avenues in Albany that is partly hidden by a tree.

His laptop screen displayed the vehicle’s lane as a green strip, with upcoming stop signs and lights displayed as green boxes. The technology even recognized a temporary stop sign and construction cones on Marin Avenue.

So far, Civil Maps has covered only a few locations. Gupta said research and development contracts are in place with several unnamed automakers to place its sensors and cameras on more autonomous vehicles early next year.

Motus Ventures Managing Partner Robert Seidl said that while other self-driving car navigation systems and developers like Google are gathering data from expensive fleets of cars, the Civil Maps automated crowdsourcing strategy could be more cost efficient.

“Literally every sensor-equipped car and taxi will continuously provide map updates as it drives around,” he said in an email. “There are huge opportunities for Civil Maps technology and crowdsourcing approach around the world, including in China, where companies are particularly eager to develop and deploy fleets of self-driving vehicles.”

Benny Evangelista is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: bevangelista@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChronicleBenny