Earlier this spring, we announced Capture Projects—a toolset that enables cities and mappers to accelerate street-level imagery collection in any location. Using computer vision, Mapillary recognizes objects in the images, such as traffic signs, lane markings, fire hydrants, and many more, and automatically positions them on the map as map features. This means faster access to map data everywhere, used for updating maps, developing cities, and improving mobility and traffic safety.

Capture Projects help you get complete imagery coverage of a location by dividing it into smaller capture tasks that a team of drivers can work on simultaneously. The toolset consists of two parts. One is an admin dashboard on the web to manage the project and see the total progress. The other is a mobile app called Mapillary Driver, which the drivers use to pick up their assignments and see where they need to map.

Today, we’re releasing the mobile app for Android, in addition to the iOS version that was already available before. While the app itself includes a camera function, both the iOS and Android versions now also feature an improved experience for capturing with external cameras (like action cameras or 360° cameras). This means you can use Capture Projects to collect imagery with the kind of devices that best suit your needs, while the app helps manage the driving, task by task.

Head over to your organization dashboard to set up a capture project. →

(For a tutorial on how to do that, see our Help Center.)

What can you achieve with Capture Projects?

Many organizations have already started with Capture Projects and made considerable progress. One good example is the City of Detroit. They aim to map out all of the city’s assets and share the data across their 30+ agencies, including public works, public safety, and transportation. This will enable them to better coordinate work across departments to improve everything from traffic safety to insurance rates.

To keep this digital map up to date, Detroit is also collecting street-level imagery, which provides both the chance to automatically extract map data about street assets, as well as a visual reference to what they look like. The city is using Capture Projects to organize the collection of 360° imagery, something they intend to make a yearly habit.

In just a few months, they have covered more than 4,600 km of streets, amounting to nearly 745,000 images—available to all of their departments as well as the general public through the Mapillary platform. “We have to be open with our information, go above and beyond to share our data,” says Dexter Slusarski, City GIS Lead in Detroit. “In the end, it is about improving the life of our citizens. We shouldn’t have to rely on them to report issues, we need to be proactive.” Capture Projects help ensure that fresh, comprehensive data is always at hand across the city’s agencies.

To learn how your organization can use capture projects to get an area covered with fresh imagery, request a demo. →

Now that the Mapillary Driver app is also available on Android, we’re looking forward to seeing many more organizations benefit from Capture Projects. You’ll find the app on Google Play and detailed documentation on our Help Center. As always, feel free to get in touch if you have any feedback or questions.

/Ryan, Director of Strategic Operations