Israeli Military Launches Radical New Google Maps Alternative

New approaches at detailed street maps.

Israeli Military Launches Radical New Google Maps Alternative
Forbes
Zak Doffman
June 30, 2020

The Israeli military has adopted artificial intelligence (AI), multi-source data fusion, and augmented reality (AR) to weed out terrorists from civilians in urban areas. Similar to Google Street View, the military is using an AR overlay from the fusion of multiple sources of highly classified intelligence and open source data on the terrain and environment, along with AI running pattern analytics from previous combat experiences to gauge the hidden enemy's next move. The AR display, which is shown to soldiers on a smartphone or tablet or streamed directly into their binoculars or weapons sights, helps them understand why a location has been deemed hostile. Final targeting decisions are left to the soldiers on the ground. The AI tool is tasked with distilling terabytes of intelligence every day into useful and relevant data, and soldiers have just five to 10 seconds to decide on any action they take based on that data.  ..."

Facebook Acquires Mapillary, Competes with Street View

First I had seen this.  Generalized tool for looking at location.  Commercial users for now.

Facebook acquires Google Street View competitor Mapillary
The street imaging platform will now be accessible to commercial users.
By Rachel England, @rachel_england in Engadget

Facebook has done a fair bit with maps in recent times — last year it opened up its AI tool to OpenStreetMap users and announced its plans to recreate an AR planet based on a 3D map of the world. More recently, it’s deployed an interactive map to keep users up-to-date with the spread of COVID-19. Now, it’s acquired Google Street View alternative Mapillary. ... "

Google Streetview AI to Inventory Infrastructure

This came to mind once as a means to check our business locations for infrastructure regulation and compliance.   Though it was noted that we would be reliant on Google for updates of the images involved.  Still a good thought to build on top of existing data gathering means.

New AI system manages road infrastructure via Google Street View   by RMIT University

Geospatial scientists have developed a new program to monitor street signs needing replacement or repair by tapping into Google Street View images.

The fully-automated system is trained using AI-powered object detection to identify street signs in the freely available images.

Municipal authorities currently spend large amounts of time and money monitoring and recording the geolocation of traffic infrastructure manually, a task which also exposes workers to unnecessary traffic risks.  .... " 

Underwater Street-View

Been a long time follower of underwater live cameras.   A number of coastal communities support them.  Maintaining them is often a problem though, the ones I track are often down.   Have examined the use of them to track fish and other ocean life behavior.   

Now Google has a selective street view of oceans.   Not a live view, but like a physical street view on their maps that you can navigate through.      New views of beauty and fragility in underwater Street View .... "

Simulation Against Real World Data for Learning

Points to how games can act as simulations of the world, and emulate their operation against real world data.    Experimented with this in the supply chain space.  In TechnologyReview:

Robot Cars Can Learn to Drive without Leaving the Garage
Playing video games and surfing Google Street View can teach software a lot about driving. by Will Knight  .... 

" ... Researchers at Princeton University recently developed a computer vision and mapping system that gathered useful information about the physical properties of roads by studying Google Street View and comparing the scenes to the information provided in open-source mapping data. This allowed it to, for example, learn where the edges of an intersection should be based on images captured by Google’s mapping cars. .... " 

Streetview in Virtual Reality

Not available yet, but the idea is interesting, consider all of the potential Streetview data,  A means to dive into maps virtually.    And then add augmentation for a particular application.   In VRFocus: 

" ... With the launch of Oculus’ software development kit (SDK) 0.7 at the end of August, developers have been quickly updating their virtual reality (VR) projects to ensure compatibility. StreetView VR, the Oculus Rift supporting app that lets users view Google’s street view in VR has added support to the beta software.  ... "