BMW’s Personal Pilot allows drivers to take their hands off the wheel and the road in certain conditions. It will be available in Germany from March 2024, as a feature of BMW’s new Series 7, to start with.

The highly automated driving function, defined as SAE Level 3, is powered by HERE HD Live Map. This marks a key milestone in the companies’ longstanding collaboration on high-definition mapping for advanced driving assistance and automated vehicle systems.

When Personal Pilot is activated, drivers can use the extra time to work, chat or even use entertainment features such as video streaming.

HERE HD Live Map provides safety-enhancing data to the vehicle system for tasks including localization, prediction and path planning. It works in combination with various vehicle sensors. 

HERE HD Live Map extends the function’s capabilities to "see" and "plan" in scenarios where the sensors alone might fall short. It enhances overall situational awareness by delivering precise information about the road network’s features and local rules in advance.

BMW also uses HERE HD map data to define the operational design domain (ODD), which lets the vehicle know when and where the Personal Pilot function can be activated.

The next level of vehicle automation

“HERE HD Live Map plays a central role for our BMW Personal Pilot Level 3 functionality. It acts as the primary input source to create the car’s driving path, providing critical information about attributes such as geometry, lane positioning and predicting road traffic signs in time”, said Nicolai Martin, SVP Driving Experience at BMW Group. “With the BMW Personal Pilot, the car drives itself ‘on-map’, with the car’s sensors acting as an extra layer sharing the safety load with the map.”

“We are proud to support our partner BMW in bringing the next level of vehicle automation to customers,” said Jason Jameson, Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Officer at HERE. “The integration of the HERE HD Live Map with BMW's Personal Pilot function marks a significant achievement, underlining the pivotal role high-definition maps play in the future of automated driving.”

HERE HD Live Map is based on UniMap, HERE’s next-generation map-making capability.