Technical Paper
Leveraging the internet to drive a real car in the Virtual Earth 3D Model
2024-04-09
2024-01-2878
Digital tools for mapping are now an integral tool for navigation. Waze, Google maps have leveraged Satellite and Google Street imagery which allow us to have an accurate representation of any set of GPS coordinates. This technology evolved just a couple of months ago with the release in May 2023 of dynamic models of the Earth. Companies like Cesium, are now offering Unity3D and Unreal models of the Earth, with an Application Programming Interface (API) that can be leveraged for any dynamic Geospatial application. These images are no longer static, but are now available for true continuous navigation. Initial applications of the technology have proven spectacular for flight simulation and drone navigation. We present here our initial results in integrating these 3D models of the Earth for driving applications. We will discuss the implementation of this integration in an in-vehicle driving simulation. The controls for our application are a real steering wheel and real pedals.