How artificial intelligence is set to revolutionize mapmaking in 2025

In 2025 and beyond, AI will continue to transform our understanding of the world’s geography and how people and goods arrive efficiently and safely from point A to B.

This post was originally published on GISCafé.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the geospatial industry and unlocking new opportunities in mapmaking, vehicle navigation and essential capabilities to simulate the real world for testing automated driving systems.

In 2025 and beyond, AI will continue to transform our understanding of the world’s geography and how people and goods arrive efficiently and safely from point A to B.

For nearly a decade, advances in cloud computing and AI have played a critical role in transforming the field of mapmaking. At HERE Technologies, we have leveraged high-performance cloud infrastructures to deploy AI and machine learning (ML) models at scale, enabling unprecedented capabilities in automated, real-time map updates. We can process vast amounts of IoT sensor data – tens of millions of kilometers of vehicle sensor data per hour – to create and maintain highly detailed digital maps around the world.

In 2025, additional technologies will enhance AI-powered mapmaking. Semantically aligned maps, for instance, will allow for greater interoperability across systems by ensuring a consistent reference architecture for map attributes. Enhanced satellite and aerial imaging tools, combined with edge computing, will also enable faster data processing, reducing latency and improving real-time accuracy and map freshness.

Improving vehicle navigation with AI

Today, AI is revolutionizing navigation by leveraging advanced computing power and tools to identify and update maps in real-time. These systems process terabytes of data from various sources, such as satellite imagery, traffic patterns, and vehicle sensors, ensuring that digital maps reflect the world’s dynamic changes accurately. AI-powered tools are also enabling real-time optimization of routes, using predictive modeling to adapt to traffic conditions, weather, and user-specific navigation patterns. This allows for personalized and efficient guidance, improving safety and reducing travel times.

The latest AI Assistants are transforming navigation further. These systems leverage generative AI large language models (LLMs) to provide natural language-powered, location-aware guidance. For example, users can request routes optimized for specific preferences, such as avoiding tolls or including stops at EV charging stations with additional amenities like coffee shops. Additionally, these tools enhance fleet management by optimizing routes based on time or cost constraints, improving estimated time of arrival (ETA) calculations, and ensuring driver safety and ease through natural language interactions.

Importantly, over-the-air updates powered by AI ensure that maps are always up to date, providing vehicles and other systems with the latest information with minimal manual changes. This capability is critical for supporting advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving, which rely on high-precision, real-time map data to function safely and efficiently.

Simulating real-world road infrastructure with AI

AI gives us a window into the future through real-world simulations. These simulations integrate vast datasets, AI models, and high-definition 3D maps to create detailed virtual environments. Such tools allow the transportation industry to test and refine automated driving systems under a wide range of conditions, from complex urban scenarios to extreme weather events.

These simulations not only accelerate innovation but also enhance safety by identifying and mitigating risks before deploying new systems on the road. Further, these new tools allow developers to significantly reduce development time, costs and go to market. AI’s ability to ingest and process massive amounts of data is fundamental to creating realistic and varied scenarios that help prepare vehicles and infrastructure for future challenges.

As the transportation industry moves towards fully automated and connected systems, these AI-driven simulation tools will help reduce development costs and become indispensable for ensuring reliability and safety at scale.

The future of AI-powered mapmaking

AI is redefining how we interact with location data and by harnessing its computational power, we can process and update maps in real-time, deliver seamless over-the-air updates, and manage the immense data requirements of modern geospatial systems.

As we embrace this new era, AI-powered geospatial technologies will continue to shape an ever-dynamic relationship with the world around us.

Originally published on GISCafé.