A few weeks after agreeing to a “wide-ranging strategic alliance” that accelerates the implementation of autonomous vehicles to the streets of London, Addison Lee Group and Oxbotica have launched a 3D street mapping exercise in London’s Canary Wharf.

With the goal of rolling out Addison Lee’s autonomous services by 2021, this mapping process is expected to create the backdrop for new autonomous services that meet urban requirements for efficient transport, reduced congestion and improved air quality.

Along with their partners Canary Wharf Group and insurer AXA XL, Addison Lee Group and Oxbotica have started the mapping process using a vehicle equipped with mapping technology to record every curb, road sign, landmark and traffic light in Canary Wharf’s 128-acre estate.

“With an expanding estate, and visitor and commuter numbers growing, we need to plan our future transport needs, and the mapping exercise with our partners at Addison Lee Group, Oxbotica and AXA XL is the first stage on this journey,” says Mark Nallen, head of technology and innovation at Canary Wharf Group.

The companies say that this is the first stage of a mapping exercise across London. During this stage, more than 250,000 miles of public roads will be mapped to provide a better understanding of the requirements for rolling out a fully autonomous service.

The mapping exercise has started with partnership vehicles equipped with radars to help Oxbotica understand the environment, cameras to take in images of the streets and lidar sensors that send out laser pulses to sense the surroundings.

With these features, Oxbotica can build a rich 3D map of the area, which is then analyzed to identify a variety of important features such as traffic lights, pedestrian crossings and road markings.

Additionally, Oxbotica will use this data to help understand the contents of street signs, and the meanings of the lane markings on the road. This will allow the vehicle to be as knowledgeable as a local resident about the complexities of each street.

This process will be repeated by Oxbotica several times, and at different times, which will help improve the understanding of how the streets change in different lighting conditions, weather and seasons of the year.

“This mapping is another step towards making autonomous vehicles a reality in complex urban environments such as Canary Wharf,” says Graeme Smith, CEO of Oxbotica.

“This partnership shows the trust we have gained to deploy our integrated autonomous vehicle and fleet management software in even the most challenging of environments. We look forward to bringing autonomous vehicles into mainstream use on the streets of London in the very near future.”