Maps have been essential since the earliest days of human civilization. As soon as people began settling in one place, understanding the surrounding environment became vital. Of course, these maps have evolved significantly over time, from very sparse maps of immediate surroundings to “global” maps featuring sea monsters in the oceans, to our extremely accurate maps of today. Technology is the main driver of this improvement, to be sure, but the demand for this information also drives the development of the technology, and with location-based services and autonomous vehicles becoming a reality, accurate, up-to-date maps are more in demand than ever.
The next big step for this space, and one that is very much in process and in place by many of the biggest map providers in the world, is combining all of the various available datasets. Today, map and location data is being brought in by imagery at terrestrial, aerial, and cosmic levels, as well as GPS data from our many location-enabled devices. Combining that data on a regular cadence is possible, but it is also a cumbersome process. Artificial intelligence is starting to break down those barriers, and our maps are more updated than ever before.
Recently, Bee Maps and Maxar announced a new partnership to combine their two areas of expertise – collecting terrestrial-based data for the former, and satellite imagery for the latter – to provide up-to-date road network mapping for a variety of customers. This new partnership works fairly simply, with Maxar deriving information about potential changes via their satellite imagery, which is then verified by Bee Maps on the ground. As detailed in a blog post from Maxar, the solution was tested in a pilot project in Austin, Texas, and the early results showed an 80 percent success rate in documenting identified changes.
To back up, Bee Maps, powered by Hivemapper, works by collecting crowd-sourced data from users of their Bee system. As Ariel Seidman, CEO and Co-Founder of Bee Maps and Hivemapper, told Geo Week News, the Bee works as a normal dash cam with added security features. Because of this, they have usage among a number of different individuals, some of whom are passionate about building maps and use them specifically for that purpose, and others like fleet managers who want to track their fleets and truck drivers who are simply looking for a dash cam. In addition to those functions, however, it is very specifically built for these mapping capabilities.
“It looks like a dash cam, so it doesn’t look out of place in a car,” Siedman said. “But inside of it is technology that is very specific to actually building a map. For example, it has not just the main camera imager, but also a stereo pair camera, so we can build a three-dimensional map. It also has very, very high-precision and positioning technology in there.”
With this new partnership, these Bee devices can now be deployed to specific areas when Maxar detects a change. Siedman estimates that about 70 percent of his users are “passive users,” who are just driving their normal route regardless of where Bee Maps may want them to go. However, there is also another group of users who will seek out areas specified by Bee Maps – in this case, areas in which change has been detected by Maxar – who will actively seek these areas of interest to gain greater rewards, coming in the form of crypto, or simply fuel the development of these maps.
With the Austin pilot showing off the full capabilities, Bee Maps is now working with its customers on the next steps. Siedman acknowledges that scaling this kind of solution worldwide is simply not feasible at this point, but they can target specific areas that are of interest to their customers, who he says include major mapping companies and autonomous vehicle companies, among others. Each of these industries require up-to-date information and needs to be aware of constant changes, something that this kind of partnership can uniquely provide. It’s how Siedman sees the future of mapping.
“I think all of these major [mapping] projects – and I would even extend it further to maritime mapping – should talk to one another,” he explained. “Whether the company should be all under one roof, I don’t think that’s necessarily critical. They each have their specific skills and technologies. But I do think, the same way that you can move data in consumer products” – like take a photo and move it through different apps – “I want to be able to move this data seamlessly, and I want that context and communication to be present as I move from maritime, to street level, to satellite.”
Maxar and Bee Maps Join Forces to Meet Demand for Regularly Updated Maps | Geo Week News
