CHICAGO – HERE Technologies, a location data and platform company, announced that Ford chose the HERE platform to enable its safe hands-free driving. The HERE platform enables Ford to create an availability map that informs Ford vehicles when it’s possible for Active Drive Assist to offer hands-free driving across 100,000 miles of highways in the United States and Canada.

We look forward to helping Ford vehicles determine where their drivers can take their hands off the wheel with Active Drive Assist.

It’s a straightforward process: Ford uses the HERE Workspace to create, develop and scale location-centric data sets and services in one secure environment. The Workspace provides access to HERE map content, dynamic data such as traffic and weather, Location Services and location algorithms such as map-matching, along with comprehensive developer, visualization and analytics tools to power location-based solution development and operation.  

All of the content and tools enable Ford to create their own reliable map. This customized map is a key input into the vehicle via the Ford cloud to determine whether or not hands-free driving is available. Active Drive Assist then fuses the map with local sensing to provide hands-free driving when conditions are appropriate. The driver is still able to take control of the vehicle at any time, and they must keep their attention on the roadway.

“We’re so pleased that Ford turned to the HERE Workspace for their creation, deployment and scaling of location-centric data products, services and applications – especially as hands free driving starts becoming more commonplace across the United States and Canada,” said Charity Rumery, Vice President of Automotive at HERE Technologies. “We look forward to helping Ford vehicles determine where their drivers can take their hands off the wheel with Active Drive Assist.”