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Random free idea: Grab image frames from the drivers' Phone camera and use that to figure out if the road exists where OSM doesn't have one. Supplement your own

Random free idea: Grab image frames from the drivers' Phone camera and use that to figure out if the road exists where OSM doesn't have one. Supplement your own Kalman Filter and update your maps!

ivankirigin 7y ago
https://medium.com/@bluevisionlabs/blue-vision-labs-is-joining-lyft-657daca89b71 https://medium.com/@bluevisionlabs/blue-vision-labs-is-joini...
aloknnikhil 7y ago
The way iOS and Android implement image capture, you cannot have an app snap images without showing the viewfinder on the screen. This basically means the driver cannot do anything else except let the app take pictures while driving. Definitely not feasible.
- kgwxd 7y ago
  Our first smart phone. Dad just bought it today. Do you have a smart phone?
- aeleos 7y ago
  Given the way that apps like Snapchat do an overlay of the camera image, in theory you could build an entire app over the camera. However it probably isn’t the best idea
- cryptoz 7y ago
  Has this changed on Android in recent years? I remember building a Camera app with a smaller-than-fullscreen viewfinder. I believe I got to set the dimensions of the viewfinder myself, making it as arbitrarily small as I wanted (or even optional?). Perhaps I remember incorrectly. I wonder if things changed.
  - DougBTX 7y ago
    Video chat needs to support a pretty small “viewfinder”, otherwise the other person on the call wouldn’t be visible!
- trevyn 7y ago
  This is definitely false from a technical perspective for iOS, though there may be something in the app review guidelines.
mariushn 7y ago
No need for cameras. Use existing vehicle tracking, via driver app GPS. Some phones have poor GPS, so wait until at least 2 vehicles pass the same route. The issue isn't about missing roads. Most problematic are missing places when searching by business name or wrong/missing address numbers. (I work in the industry) Pelias project helps a lot, but there's still more data + software work to be done.
- jsjohnst 7y ago
  > Some phones have poor GPS This is quite the understatement. I used to work for a company selling a personal safety device that paired with your phone and the data we would get back for location on some Android phones was just atrocious. On a large number of older Pixel devices, we’d routinely see location off by a large margin (as in over a mile in the worst cases). Interestingly, we’d see the “real” user location provided with a location accuracy of 100-400ft, then the device would radically jump to a new location (again, sometimes over a mile away) with a location accuracy of <50ft. When you are dispatching help to a person in an emergency, exact location matters!
Jommi 7y ago
I saw a great hackathon project (which ended up winning 20K€) based on this, it was quite an interesting project at the time!

Random free idea: Grab image frames from the drivers' Phone camera and use that to figure out if the road exists where OSM doesn't have one. Supplement your own Kalman Filter and update your maps!

ivankirigin 7y ago

https://medium.com/@bluevisionlabs/blue-vision-labs-is-joining-lyft-657daca89b71 https://medium.com/@bluevisionlabs/blue-vision-labs-is-joini...

aloknnikhil 7y ago

The way iOS and Android implement image capture, you cannot have an app snap images without showing the viewfinder on the screen. This basically means the driver cannot do anything else except let the app take pictures while driving. Definitely not feasible.

kgwxd 7y ago
Our first smart phone. Dad just bought it today. Do you have a smart phone?
aeleos 7y ago
Given the way that apps like Snapchat do an overlay of the camera image, in theory you could build an entire app over the camera. However it probably isn’t the best idea
cryptoz 7y ago
Has this changed on Android in recent years? I remember building a Camera app with a smaller-than-fullscreen viewfinder. I believe I got to set the dimensions of the viewfinder myself, making it as arbitrarily small as I wanted (or even optional?). Perhaps I remember incorrectly. I wonder if things changed.
- DougBTX 7y ago
  Video chat needs to support a pretty small “viewfinder”, otherwise the other person on the call wouldn’t be visible!
trevyn 7y ago
This is definitely false from a technical perspective for iOS, though there may be something in the app review guidelines.

mariushn 7y ago

No need for cameras. Use existing vehicle tracking, via driver app GPS. Some phones have poor GPS, so wait until at least 2 vehicles pass the same route. The issue isn't about missing roads. Most problematic are missing places when searching by business name or wrong/missing address numbers. (I work in the industry) Pelias project helps a lot, but there's still more data + software work to be done.

jsjohnst 7y ago
> Some phones have poor GPS This is quite the understatement. I used to work for a company selling a personal safety device that paired with your phone and the data we would get back for location on some Android phones was just atrocious. On a large number of older Pixel devices, we’d routinely see location off by a large margin (as in over a mile in the worst cases). Interestingly, we’d see the “real” user location provided with a location accuracy of 100-400ft, then the device would radically jump to a new location (again, sometimes over a mile away) with a location accuracy of <50ft. When you are dispatching help to a person in an emergency, exact location matters!

Jommi 7y ago

I saw a great hackathon project (which ended up winning 20K€) based on this, it was quite an interesting project at the time!