MapmyIndia, one of India’s renowned mapping companies, has today taken center stage at its ‘Map the Future Conference 2017’ to take the wraps off its freshest initiatives. And the company has announced that it plans to utilize its Real View platform to now map the complete world digitally — with depth and intricacies of the real world intact within this model.
Called ‘Digital Map Twin of the Real World,’ the company now plans to capture, recognize and publish real-as-life 3D and 360-degree maps for the first time in the world. It seems MapmyIndia is looking to follow the path already traveled by — yeah, you guessed it right — Google Maps. It plans to map both the indoors, as well as outdoors, with the use of GPS, lasers, and panoramic camera sensors. But, these will be embedded atop traditional vehicles, backpacks, trains, and flying drones for outside views. For capturing indoor worlds, the company will employ fast-moving trolleys mounted with the said equipment.
The massive amounts of data collected using the cohort of sensors and mounted cameras will be updated on MapmyIndia’s Real View platform. It can leverage the company’s own IoT (Internet of Things) platform, InTouch, to continuously process enormous streams of real-time video and data from vehicles and moderated crowd-sourced reports on traffic (similar to Google’s Waze).
This platform is capable of analyzing geotagged videos using computer vision and machine learning algorithms to separate stationary and moving objects on the roads. Further, through its recently debuted eLoc digital address system, MapmyIndia plans to simplify the addition as well as identification of houses in this model.
Commenting on the same, Rakesh Verma, Managing Director, MapmyIndia said:
In 2017, we are excited to pioneer building of the Real World’s Digital Map Twin and are proud to say that India and MapmyIndia will lead the world in mapping innovation and technologies.
Our cities need to become smarter, and that can only happen if we model and map our cities in full 3D, 360-degree and in real-time, so that quality of life and efficiency of governance and business increases in cities.
And finally, the indoors of our buildings and infrastructure, where 90% of the GDP is created and where we spend 90% of our time, needs to be fully mapped in 3D, so that we as a society can become the smartest and feel the safest.
Further, he continues to mention that the creation of a digital model of the real world will accelerate the development of mobility solutions for the future. This will contribute to the advent of super-safe self-driving vehicles, smart cities, and emergency response systems — not only in India but also across the globe.
The company is keen on making this a reality in the coming years and is, thus, augmenting its robust set of solutions with the fresh acquisition of Bengaluru-based pioneer in VideoMaps, VidTeq. Founded by Chandra Thimmannagari and Navada Muraleedhara in 2008, the company’s video mapping technology enables you to the video clip of the complete route from point A to point B within a particular city. It has already mapped more than 20 Cities in India.
Talking about the acquisition, Chandra Thimmannagari, founder and CEO at VidTeq said,
We believe it’s a perfect match. We are the pioneers in VideoMaps. By joining hands with MapmyIndia, who are the leaders in digital maps and location technologies, we would like to together build next generation Advanced VideoMaps that can power Autonomous Vehicles. This is a fantastic day for our users, customers, partners and employees.
VidTeq’s technology stack constitutes of products such as VideoMap, Explore, 3D Model, Book Online Platform, Drone View, Map View, 360 Interior/Exterior View etc. These are prominently being used by builders, colleges, and schools across the nation to map their premises and projects. MapmyIndia’s believes they’re a significant addition to their existing product lineup as they’ll accelerate the 3D mapping project with their skills and experience in the said technological field.
