The Mapillary platform is a collaborative one where everyone wins from everyone else’s contributions. The data you collect for one purpose will likely be useful for a number of other use cases. We’ve learnt that the knowledge that you’re helping others is what’s motivating the Mapillary community—whether it’s organizations or individual volunteers. To support that cause, we’ve created a tool that connects actions with objectives and helps contributors collaborate with each other on a more detailed level.

The Mapillary Tasker is a tool for connecting the Mapillary community to work together on predefined tasks in specific areas, using street-level images. It enables a task creator to tell other contributors where help is needed and what needs to be done, while a contributor can find and work on projects that will make immediate use of the collected data—so you will know what difference your work makes.

A task is related to a specific area and can be focused on completing coverage, making map edits based on images, or verifying object detections (which are a result of automatic data extraction from images). Any organization or individual can initiate a task, and each task is set up so that it's easy to invite others to participate.

Collaborate with others on capture, map edits and verification

You will find the Mapillary Tasker in the left navigation bar on the Mapillary web app. Once activated, three task types will be visible: capture, map editing, and verification. Each task has a description where you can learn more about how you participate.

Capture tasks

The purpose of a capture task is to improve coverage or make sure there is fresh coverage of street-level imagery in an area. The task is built around a grid, and you participate by filling the grid with new images. As coverage grows, the zones will turn green, and the objective is to shift the whole grid from red to green.

Map edit tasks

A map editing task focuses on adding street-level details to maps using Mapillary images. Map edits will take place on an external platform (e.g. OpenStreetMap, HERE Map Creator, or ArcGIS) and you participate by adding details to the map according to the instructions of the task.

Verification tasks

A verification task connects to Mapillary’s object detections, and the job is to verify detections in a specific location for you or someone else to get more accurate map data. You’ll be working in Mapillary’s Verifier tool to perform the task.

How to create a task

The Tasker is available for anyone to participate in. However, since this release is a beta version, you can’t set up a new task on your own yet. To create a task, you need to send us a request that needs to be reviewed by a Mapillary administrator. To submit a task, click on the "Request a new task" button in the Tasker and provide us with the details.

How others are using it

Over the past months, the community has helped us test parts of the Tasker and found plenty of ways to use it. For example, the OpenStreetMap community in Brasilia is working on a project to update key road data in central Brasilia. As the majority of the current images are older than six months, the local community has combined a capture task with a map edit task. Another example is the City of Johns Creek, GA, where city officials will use the results of a capture task to manage the city’s traffic signs. To learn about more tasks, take a look at the Tasker.

Future plans

As mentioned, this release is a beta version, and we hope to learn a lot from how you will be using it. One avenue for future developments is to enable setting up tasks straight from the tool, without needing administration help from the Mapillary team.

We are looking forward to adding your tasks—this tool is for you to collaborate on!

/Sandra