HERE partners with Mapillary to make better maps

HERE Technologies, the global provider of map data and location services, is partnering with street-level imagery platform Mapillary to generate map data from images contributed by their communities and processed with computer vision.

Amsterdam - By linking the image-gathering efforts of the Mapillary and HERE Map Creator communities, the two companies are expanding the pool of imagery used in the mapmaking process. The partnership follows a pilot conducted in the second half of 2016 and is currently live in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with potential expansion globally in 2018.

Mapillary will provision its database of 150 million street-level images, combined into a 3D representation of the world using computer vision technology, within the HERE Map Creator editing tool. This will allow the HERE Map Creator community to add more details to maps, which means greater map coverage and fresher data for millions of people using applications powered by HERE.

In parallel, the HERE Map Creator community will be able to upload street-level images to Mapillary's database using Mapillary mobile apps, dashcams, or any GPS-enabled cameras. Within hours of upload, the images will be available through Mapillary for commercial and government use, GIS applications, academic research, and humanitarian projects.

"Following our successful pilot together, HERE is delighted to enter into a partnership with Mapillary," says Iain McNicol, Planning Manager at HERE. "This is great news for people passionate about mapping our planet. Now our community has even more resources at hand to help them make great maps."

The partnership validates a new approach to map data collection, using advances in computer vision and off-the-shelf hardware to achieve greater reach and faster processing at lower costs. With this approach, communities like those of HERE and Mapillary can play a major role today in scaling and speeding up the development of maps for building smart cities, powering location-based services, and developing autonomous vehicles.

"We're working with HERE to combine our strengths in computer vision with tried-and-true methods of making maps where they matter most-where people go," says Janine Yoong, VP Business Development at Mapillary. "While we're constantly pushing the boundaries of machine intelligence for extracting data from images, the heart of this collaboration is human."