This is how a self-driving car ‘sees’ the road

This video from Civil Maps, the high-definition maps technology company backed by Ford, reveals some of what’s going on when it comes to combining detailed 3D maps with sensor data culled from LiDAR, optical cameras, radar and other on-board vehicle hardware used to take stock of the world around an autonomous vehicle.

Civil Maps Product Manager Anuj Gupta explains how its technology localizes a car in six degrees of freedom (a term you may be familiar with if you follow the virtual reality industry), across both x,y and z movement axes as well as on roll, pitch and yaw rotational axes to help a car focus its sensors exactly where they need to be paying closest attention on the road at any given moment.