Facebook opens up its AI tool to OpenStreetMap users

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Volunteers can add unmapped roads, bridges and buildings.

Plugging a new address into your smartphone’s map app can show you where to go in seconds. But in places like rural Bangladesh and Indonesia, there are millions of miles of roads that are still uncharted territory. Facebook now hopes its AI technology will make it easier for volunteers on OpenStreetMap to add unmapped areas.

The social media giant announced today that it is opening its Map with AI tool to the entire OSM community, allowing anyone to use the tool to identify areas in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda. Eventually, the company hopes to expand its mapping tool to cover the entire world.

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Umbra Composit could scan the world in 3D to the detail of a single grain of sand

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Umbra shows a scan of Helsinki.

Last year, Umbra unveiled a tool called The Composit that will let you upload a complex 3D model to the cloud and then view it on any device. Now, the Helsinki, Finland-based company is showing how it can create a huge web-based virtual model of a city that can put something like Google Maps to shame.

Umbra claims its tech could scan the whole world down to the detail of a single grain of sand. It could be done via a kind of crowdsourcing, using only people with smartphones who use their devices as scanners. That might sound outlandish, but the company is already well under way with that mission in its native Finland.

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