High accuracy mapping from
videos for efficient asset
management in cities
Jeroen Emile Delcour
Jeroen Emile Delcour
• BSc. Psychobiology
• MSc. Molecular Neuroscience
• Data scientist
Importance of maps and surveying
•Navigation
•Determine land ownership
•Construction and maintenance
Nippur (ca. 1400 BC)
Valcamonica rock art, Paspardo r. 29,
topographic composition, 4th millennium BCE
Theodolite
(invented 16th century)
Essence of mapping
1. What?
2. Where?
Camera
GPS
What about aerial photography?
• Survey large areas quickly
• Low resolution (~15cm per pixel)
• Rarely up-to-date
• Expensive
• Many blind spots in cities
Drones?
Way too many no-fly zones…
IMU
GPS
• Cheap
• On-demand and fast
(thus always up-to-date)
• High-resolution images
• Works great in cities
GPS
Images
+ ?
We have all the data we need
A PROPOSAL FOR THE DARTMOUTH SUMMER RESEARCH PROJECT ON ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
J. McCarthy, Dartmouth College
M. L. Minsky, Harvard University
N. Rochester, I.B.M. Corporation
C.E. Shannon, Bell Telephone Laboratories
August 31, 1955
We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the
summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The study is to proceed
on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of
intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to
simulate it. An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form
abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve
themselves. We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these
problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer.
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmouth.html
Convolutional neural networks
We need:
• Data
• Data
• Data
• Data
• Data
• Data
• Data
Convolutional neural networks
Coverage of Google Street View
🤔
We need:
Data
Data
Data
Data
Data
Data
Data
Labeled
Labeled
Labeled
Labeled
Labeled
Labeled
Labeled
Convolutional neural networks
Academic datasets don’t contain relevant labels
The bigger picture
GPS
Images
+ ?
Municipal planning map
(labeled data!)
Forward pass
Backpropagation
images
provides
Mapping between an image and the world
Mapping between image and world
Camera properties
GPS & IMU
Orthoprojection
One-to-one mapping of pixels to geographic coordinates
Now we have labeled data!
But municipal maps are far from perfect…
The student becomes the master
Training
Trained modelTraining data
The student becomes the master
Training
WIP
Prototype results
Prototype map
WIP
Driveways and gardens
(not part of municipal maps)
Turns out the world isn’t flat
Orthoprojections aren’t great for 3D objects
How do we map objects?
• Trees
• Lampposts
• Traffic signs
• Etc.
Finding labeled images of trees
COCO dataset
•330K images (>200K labeled)
•1.5 million object instances
•80 object categories
•91 stuff categories
🌳
Municipal maps have tree points
Mapping between image and world
• Estimate bounding box size using distance from the camera
• Still far from perfect training data
WIP
1. Detect object in panoramas
2. Intersect base of object
with ground plane
Object localization
α
h
d
WIP
Prototype results
Drive-through mapping
• Fast
• Cheap
• Up-to-date
• High resolution
• Works great in cities
OrangeNXT - High accuracy mapping from videos for efficient fiber optic cable laying

OrangeNXT - High accuracy mapping from videos for efficient fiber optic cable laying