NavInfo HD Map is certified by ASPICE CL2

What qualifies a top restaurant that customers love? The taste of dishes? The freshness of ingredients? Or the dining environment? Or the customer service? However, most of us tend to ignore the value difference behind “providing quality dishes and services” and “providing consistently high-quality dishes and services”.

Take NavInfo as a restaurant that provides data services. Since its establishment 17 years ago, its continuous and stable output of high-quality products and services laid a solid foundation for its leading role in this industry. The product quality insurance system construction and production standardization are the determinants for NavInfo’s consistently high-quality products and are the key factors for NavInfo to become a trustworthy solution-provider for its customers.

Recently, NavInfo's HD Map products have officially passed the ASPICE CL2 (Automotive Industry Software Process Improvement and Capability Assessment Model Level 2) international certification, which is the only ASPICE Level 2 certificate issued for HD maps worldwide, NavInfo's strategy of ‘Product Quality First’ has greatly contributed to the realization of HD Map mass production.

The German Automobile Industry Federation (VDA), an industry organization representing the interests of more than 600 companies of German automobile manufactures and automobile component suppliers, which develops the ASPICE system model that a framework for evaluating the level of software development capabilities. The purpose is to promote the software development process of automobile component suppliers and improve the quality of in-vehicle software.

In the German automotive industry, ASPICE has become the purchasing criteria of software products for OEMs and Tier 1 system vendors. In the field of navigation maps, NavInfo is equipped with the highest product qualification and quality certification, such as: ASPICE L3, IATF16949, ISO27001, ISO9001, ISO14001, ISO45001. Nevertheless, in the field of autonomous driving map, NavInfo is the only supplier that obtained the ASPICE CL2 certification worldwide.

‘For 17 years, we’ve been rooted in the automotive industry and deepened our specialty in location services. We understand the importance of product quality to our customers. The constantly optimized map production standards and processes are the premise for NavInfo to accumulate its core assets such as standard data and toolchain and laid a solid foundation for the mass production of standardized and high-quality HD Map, which further empowers our customers and the whole industry.’ Said by Liu Liang, director of NavInfo’s product quality system and the appraiser of ASPICE.

Since the beginning of HD Map business in 2014, NavInfo has re-defined the HD Map specification by referring to the highest standards of the navigation map quality system. Based on these NavInfo has designed product specifications and its production tools, and whole product certification and production standardization system which consists of data collection and in-house coding, automated production, semi-automated production, manual production, data format conversion, and product release.

The in-depth understanding of map products and location services has enabled NavInfo to stay on the fast track in the process of innovation and development of new product technologies.

Yet, the HD Map differs from traditional navigation maps and has higher requirements in terms of space abstraction level, accuracy, update speed, and stability. Therefore, the standardization of the production process should not be underestimated. After 18 months of ‘polishing’ and ‘carving’, this certification implemented a total of 2,161 improvements in 25 types of production processes covering HD Map’s technology, R&D, data, quality and gradually standardized 2,751 ASPICE system assets.

“Strictly speaking, the ASPICE system is more suitable for the certification of the embedded software product development process in the automotive industry. However, by integrating BP (best practice) of the ASPICE model into the implementation process of HD Map, it can promote the continuous improvement and optimization of the entire process of data production.” Lv Kun, manager of the quality department of the intelligent map business of NavInfo, said, “The core value and significance of ASPICE system certification is to continuously optimize the production process and improve the quality of product development projects, so that NavInfo can guarantee the output of standardized and high-quality products at present and in the future."

In early 2019, NavInfo signed HD Map and related service license agreement with BMW. In 2021, the BMW iNEXT self-driving car will be equipped with NavInfo’s HD Map to provide L3 autonomous driving services to the car owners. It is the China's first HD Map order for the L3+ autonomous driving system, NavInfo also clearly defined the product positioning for the first time, HD-Map will be a real-time, high-reliability safety sensor in the system.

From L3 autonomous driving system, the driving body will be transferred from the human driver to the autonomous driving system for the first time. The role of the map will also transfer from part of the infotainment system for driver reference to acting as a sensor for autonomous driving system. This transformation has brought unprecedented high demands on the quality and reliability of map products.

Therefore, in the direction of promoting the construction of the HD Map quality system, it can be foreseen that NavInfo will not stop moving forward.

At present, NavInfo is constantly improving and optimizing the process of HD Map production methods, moving forward to achieve the requirements of ASPICE CL3, and rapidly advancing customer review mechanisms with customer partners. At the same time, NavInfo will explore the application of automotive functional safety methods to HD Map production process and product control. The goal is to take ISO26262 ASIL-B equivalent standards as a requirement to produce its HD Map, to lead the industry to reach higher standards, and to empower customers and partners with reliable product and service solutions.