Woven Planet acquires CARMERA

Woven Planet, a subsidiary of Toyota Motors, has announced the acquisition of CARMERA, a US spatial AI company which specialises in bringing next-generation road intelligence at scale to autonomous vehicles.

This is the second major deal for Woven Planet in North America, and follows the April 2021 announcement that it was acquiring Level 5, the self-driving division of Lyft.

CARMERA will report into the Automated Mapping Platform (“AMP”) organisation of Woven Alpha, which focuses on new strategic areas for business expansion and incubates innovative projects such as Woven City and Arene, which is Woven Planet’s open software platform.

AMP is a connected crowdsourced software platform that creates, develops and distributes high definition (“HD”) maps – a key enabler for smart and safe automated mobility.

The Woven Alpha team plans to develop AMP to become a globally comprehensive road and lane network HD map platform, enabling high-precision localization support to automated vehicles.

The acquisition of CARMERA will accelerate AMP’s shift from the R&D stage to the next phase of commercialisation by bolstering the platform’s engineering team in the development of HD maps. In addition, it will provide access to CARMERA’s sophisticated map update, change management and IoT sensing technology.

Woven said that it will tap into CARMERA’s ability to successfully update HD maps from crowdsourced, camera-based inputs, which is a significantly cheaper and faster approach than traditional methods. According to Woven this will strengthen AMP’s ability to serve a comprehensive set of road classes and features, reflecting changes in lane markings, traffic signals, signs and more in near real-time, and support its future multi-regional commercial launch.

CARMERA will join Woven Planet Group as a wholly-owned subsidiary, expanding the company’s footprint beyond its Tokyo headquarters by adding New York and Seattle offices to its planned offices in Silicon Valley and London.