Major car manufacturer, General Motors, or GM, has registered a patent application for a continuously updating navigation map system. The system would utilize the blockchain to combine data from vehicle sensors and create a reliable map for autonomous vehicles.

According to the filing, which was submitted on October 1, 2018, and issued on April 2, 2020, existing maps are “difficult to keep dynamic without incurring high costs.”One potential cause for this is that most maps are maintained via specialized vehicles, whose influence will inevitably be restricted to just a few precise sections of the world.

General Motors’ solution is to share the process with many vehicles, which would gather data about their surroundings by sensors as they drive around. The real-time data would be associated with a discrepancy detector, which analyzes the existing maps. 

Any difference is conveyed to a blockchain network that accommodates all the map data. The “candidate transaction” is then verified if other vehicles report a similar change. The patent implies that the network would be sustained by vehicles and mining nodes placed in data centers.

The system was likely produced for GM’s “Super Cruise” feature, which gives a semi-automated driving experience on some luxury models. Unlike opponents from Tesla, the system depends very profoundly on navigation maps, which is why it can only be utilized on “supported” roads.

Distributing the map generation process would possibly speed up the manufacturer’s attempts to cover the majority of the roads in the U.S.

The patent unveils that one of the advantages of the system is sharing the map generation process and providing various vendors to commit to a single map. This is possibly the reason why it executes blockchain. 

Automotive industry and blockchain

General Motors is one of the more productive car manufacturers in the blockchain sector. In October 2019, it was one of the five-car manufacturer’s trialing a blockchain-based payment and identification system for vehicles. 

Its finance arm funded in a blockchain startup in June, to control auto financing fraud.

The manufacturer also patented another blockchain-based communication system in December 2018, which would support different entities to interact with autonomous cars.