Dubai is now deploying self-driving cars to map out all of the city in a 3D format.
The self-driving car will be used to go out and capture Dubai’s landmarks and streets in preparation to render the city in 3D form entirely.
The use of the self-driving car comes as Dubai hopes to be a pioneer and trailblazer in self-driving transport. According to Gulf News report, Dubai wants 25% of all of its transport to be totally autonomous by 2030. It reports that this ambition depends on furthering the tech found inside the car being trailed for this 3D mapping.
The new car was developed for the mission of mapping out Dubai, it will use both machine learning technology and artificial intelligence to not only capture 3D images of Dubai, but to identify locations and landmarks using AI.
“Its task is to capture all the places the car is passing through and update all the data and enter it directly to the Dubai Geospatial map. That is how our slogan became “All Dubai is here,” Mariam Obaid Al Muhairi, director of Dubai Municipality’s GIS Centre said reports Gulf News.
3D maps are incredibly useful for Dubai. 3D maps contain high resolution images which can be used to measure buildings and roads, this feature is especially useful for emergency services.
Mariam Obaid Al Muhairi said last year that this technology will “help Civil Defence to know the height, accessibility, and complexity of the shape of a building where a fire has broken out. If they know that data, it helps the team to decide the devices they need to take and plan the firefighting operation in a better way,”
Beyond measurements, the technology can allocate data to a location. This data includes, according to Gulf News, details of real estate units, distribution of rooms, air conditioners and lighting.
The push into 3D maps, data woven into the city, and self-driving cars all falls in Dubai’s Smart Dubai 2021 mission. The goal is to make Dubai the happiest city on earth and push towards an entirely interconnected city. Technology such as this, unveiled at GITEX 2019, is a step towards that.
