MIT Technology Review/Charlotte Jee: Mapping the world in 3D will let us paint streets with augmented reality

MIT Technology Review

Scape; Photos edited by MIT Technology Review
Connectivity
Mapping the world in 3D will let us paint streets with augmented reality
Machines need an exact digital replica of our world if we’re going to get true, location-specific AR—or accurate robot food deliveries.

    by Charlotte Jee April 17, 2019

If you believe tech optimists, 10 years from now self-driving cars will be ubiquitous, drones will deliver our parcels, and robots will bring us our groceries. And one day soon, our cities will be painted with augmented reality that feels as if it belongs to the street corner where it was placed.

Whether or not any of that comes to pass, one piece of the puzzle will be crucial to this future: ultra-precise location technology. GPS and the wandering blue dot on smartphone mapping apps are useful for a human navigating an unfamiliar city, but that just won’t cut it for machines. They will need to know where things are down to the centimeter.
Sign up for The Download
Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology

London-based startup Scape reckons that’s what it can provide. The firm’s visual positioning service uses GPS and multiple camera images to work out exactly where you are within two or three seconds, according to cofounder Edward Miller. It has collected over two billion street images to precisely 3D-map more than 100 cities around the world, including London, San Francisco, Paris, Moscow, and Tokyo. Some of the data was collected by employees cycling around the cities with cameras attached to their bicycles, but Scape’s platform can process images from any source.
Scape

In use, Scape’s algorithms extract “points of interest” (like street signs, storefronts, or lampposts) from any image in order to compare it with the billions already in its database. Its system then uses triangulation to deduce the angle and distance from which the object was observed, returning its precise location to the end user. This kind of accuracy will anchor AR to the world better than is possible with GPS or other technologies—making it far more impressive and versatile.

“Scape is about taking this to the next level. It’s about expanding this capability out to an entire living, breathing city,” Miller says.
Scape

There are some exciting applications of AR already, mostly within the entertainment world: just a few days ago Snapchat celebrated the launch of the latest season of Game of Thrones by unleashing virtual dragons in New York. But many commercial companies also want AR products that are locked in a specific place for customers as they walk through a city. Relying on GPS to do this doesn’t really work too well at the moment (beyond games like Pokémon Go).

“Using existing location technologies, you can navigate through a city with an accuracy of a few meters. This is okay, but for augmented reality, you’ll need a completely different level of precision,” says Krystian Mikolajczyk, a computer vision expert at Imperial University.

Of course, this kind of accuracy won’t just be a boon for AR applications. The challenge of how to make machines understand their surroundings is one that lots of companies are grappling with.

For example, Waymo packs its cars with GPS, lidar, cameras, and radar sensors to help them navigate autonomously. Starship Technologies, which provides robot delivery services, uses a similar approach. The difference here is the level of precision—and the fact that Scape is doing it purely using cameras, which are significantly cheaper than lidar and other laser technologies. Its platform also differs from others in generating maps that can cope with changes to the environment, which is crucial for creating one unified version of the world for both people and computers. This will be important for letting humans collect robot or drone deliveries, for example.

Scape wants to use its location services to become the underlying infrastructure upon which driverless cars, robotics, and augmented-reality services sit.

“Our end goal is a one-to-one map of the world covering everything,” says Miller. “Our ambition is to be as invisible as GPS is today.”

Learn from the humans leading the way in connectivity at EmTech Next. Register Today!
June 11-12, 2019
Cambridge, MA
Register now
Share

Charlotte Jee

Charlotte Jee

I write The Download, the only newsletter in tech you need to read every day. Before joining MIT Technology Review I was editor of Techworld. Prior to that I was a reporter covering the intersection of politics, the public sector and technology.… More
Related Video

More videos

Connectivity
10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2019, curated by Bill Gates 17:18

Connectivity
Technology, Work, and Urban Ecosystems: How Should Cities and Regions Respond? 31:37

Connectivity
The Next Generation of 3-D Printing 20:25
More from Connectivity

What it means to be constantly connected with each other and vast sources of information.

    The first study of a twin in space looks like good news for a trip to Mars

    Thanks to twin astronauts, we now have our first solid evidence of how the human body responds to long-term spaceflight—and it’s thrown up some mysteries.

    by Erin Winick
    Online dating sites give us an intriguing look at how we meet people now

    More than 300 million people use online dating sites. We’re now beginning to get a look at how these complex networks work.

    by Emerging Technology from the arXiv
    This is the first ever photo of a black hole

    The scientists behind it spent a decade using a virtual telescope the size of Earth to create this historic image.

    by Erin Winick

More from Connectivity
From Our Advertisers

    In association with VMware
    Digital transformation sparks innovation in networking

    In association with Google
    For data-savvy marketers, there’s a new keyword: Intent

    In association with Google
    Machine learning teaches marketers to cultivate a growth mindset

    In association with Oracle and Intel
    Machine learning - driven analytics: Key to digital transformation

Want more award-winning journalism? Subscribe to Print Subscription.

    Print Subscription {! insider.prices.print_only !}*

    {! insider.display.menuOptionsLabel !}

    Six print issues per year plus The Download delivered to your email in-box each weekday.
    {! insider.buttons.print_only.buttonText !}

       
    See details+

* {! insider.display.footerLabel !}

See international prices
The Download What's important in technology and innovation, delivered to you every day

Follow us
Twitter Facebook RSS
MIT Technology Review

The mission of MIT Technology Review is to bring about better-informed and more conscious decisions about technology through authoritative, influential, and trustworthy journalism.

Browse
International
Editions

    Company
    Your Account
    Customer Support
    More
    Policies

MIT Technology Review © 2019 v.|eiπ|
/3
You've read of three free articles this month. Subscribe now for unlimited online access. You've read of three free articles this month. Subscribe now for unlimited online access. This is your last free article this month. Subscribe now for unlimited online access. You've read all your free articles this month. Subscribe now for unlimited online access. You've read of three free articles this month. Log in for more, or subscribe now for unlimited online access. Log in for two more free articles, or subscribe now for unlimited online access.