Engineers at GM have come up with a new idea for improving what a vehicle can see around it. Picture the top-down view that a 360-degree surround camera can generate, but then combine the images from the cameras on your vehicle with the cameras on the vehicles around you. That's a bigger, more detailed look, and it could be important for tech like self-driving cars. Teamwork Could Make The Autonomous Dream Work A recently published GM patent describes what the automaker calls a "collaborative perception system," and it uses it to create a "cooperative perception map." Those descriptions summarize it well, because it relies heavily on inter-vehicle collaboration. Autonomous vehicles rely on huge amounts of data to know their location, where they are going, and what is around them. Naturally, they have sensors to help do that, including LiDar and radar, as well as ultrasonic sensors and cameras with machine vision. They also have maps and previous laser scans of areas. But even with all of those combined, an autonomous vehicle can't see everything. It has blind spots for objects that are hidden, like behind other cars, as well as for objects that might not look to a computer like they are about to move, but a human can identify. Cruise Robotaxis Are Back - But You Can't Hitch A Ride In One GM has charged up its Cruise Bolt AVs to test out its newest self-driving car tech. One way to solve that problem is to have every vehicle in a location working together to make a new map. Your car can't see beside that parked car at the curb, but if its cameras could "show" your car the hidden side, your car would be safer and more effective. Data Sharing Is Both Impressive And Terrifying Sharing that data,